Make great efforts to build professional and modern Vietnam customs on par with customs administrations of developed countries

Build Digital Customs, Smart Customs and Green Customs: GDVC’s Director General Nguyen Van Can

The view of conference at the GDVC’s headquarters. Photo: QH

Bright spot in an-smuggling

On behalf of the leaders of the Ministry of Finance, Deputy Minister Nguyen Duc Chi attended and gave speech at the Conference.

According to the report at the conference, following directions of the Government and the Ministry of Finance, the coordination of ministries, central and local government agencies, and the great efforts of customs officers in the whole sector, the GDVC has concretized the resolutions of the Party, the National Assembly and the Government to accomplish tasks and achieved remarkable results.

Notably, the GDVC has gained positive results in preventing and combating crimes, smuggling and trade fraud.

In 2023, the smuggling and illegal transportation of goods is still complicated. The Customs detected violations related to smuggling and trade fraud such as failure to declare or declaration inconsistent with the actual goods; concealing the origin and route of the shipment to smuggle and illegally transport banned goods, drugs, wildlife, and currency across borders, and importing goods ineligible for imports.

The trafficking and illegal transportation of wild animals tends to shift from seaports in the Southern and Central regions to Northern provinces such as Hai Phong and Quang Ninh. Smugglers often use tricks such as dividing and mixing wild animals and wildlife products in imported goods to avoid being detected by the Customs, or falsely declaring name of goods to export and import goods under official-quota trade or failing to implement declaration, hiding goods in vehicles to ship across border crossings and trails.

The trafficking and illegal transportation of drugs across the border tends to increase. Smugglers regularly change transportation methods, with increasingly sophisticated tricks.

The GDVC has advised the Standing Agency of the National Steering Committee 389 and the Steering Committee 389 of the Ministry of Finance, and drastically and taken measures to promptly detect, arrest and handle violations.

As of November 15, the Customs sector detected and handled 14,618 violations, with the estimated infringing goods value of VND 11,521.26 billion, up 98.9% year-on-year.

The Customs prosecuted 35 cases and transferred 166 cases to other competent authorities for prosecution, up 48% year-on-year; collected VND474.3 billion, up 11% compared with the previous year.

Notably, the Customs sector chaired and coordinated with the Police, Border Guard in arresting 243 cases and 277 suspects, and seized 2.8 tons of drugs.

Reduction in imports and exports have a strong impact on the State revenue

At the end of November, the Customs sector processed 15 million declarations. The total import and export turnover decreased by 8.2% or US$55.56 billion to US$619.36 billion year-on-year.

The export turnover fell 5.8% to US$322.61 billion; and import turnover dropped 10.7% to US$ 296.75 billion.

By the end of November, the country's goods trade balance had a trade surplus of US$25.86 billion.

As of December 14, the revenue declined 16% year-on-year to VND351,428 billion, meeting 82.7% of the estimate. The estimated revenue of the whole year falls 16.4% to VND365,000 billion compared to the previous year, meeting 85.9% of the estimate.

The decrease in the Customs revenue stems from objective factors, especially the import turnover which is the major revenues, plummets compared with the previous year. Notably, the imported turnover of group of raw materials, machinery, equipment and spare parts imported for production (coal, chemicals and chemical products, plastics, iron and steel, textile raw materials, electronic components, auto components...) that account for 57 % of total import turnover, fell about 16.7%, reducing about VND 32,200 billion in the revenue. The imported petroleum group increased by about 21.4% in volume but decreased by about 1.4% in turnover, reducing revenue by about 2,400 billion VND.

There are other reasons such as: the preferential tax rate on gasoline imported from the ASEAN market is 5%, and DO oil and FO oil at 0%, so firms mainly import the products from ASEAN market instead of importing from Korea with the gasoline tax rate of 8%; The imported crude oil group increased by 7% in volume but decreased by 12% in turnover due to the decrease in crude oil prices of about 19.4% year-on-year.

Promoting the implementation of the Customs Development Strategy

At the Conference, leaders of the GDVC, departments and local customs departments gave speeches about achievements of the whole Customs sector, and provided solutions to accomplish tasks in 2024.

In 2024, the draft report of the GDVC determines that the Customs sector will expedite the implementation of the Customs Development Strategy until 2030 and the Customs Digital Transformation. In addition, the sector will implement the Government's Resolutions on macroeconomic management, aiming at the overall goal of building a professional and modern Vietnam Customs, on par with the Customs administrations of developed countries in the world, and leading in implementing Digital government, and Smart customs model.

The GDVC sets out directions and solutions to perform political tasks in 2024:

The Customs sector will complete the legal framework based on comprehensively reviewing, amending and supplementing the system of legal documents and customs procedures to meet the requirements of the Smart customs model and Digital Customs.

The sector will continue to reform and streamline customs procedures towards modernity and transparency, aiming to improve the business environment and enhance national competitiveness.

The sector will drastically deploy solutions and strive to complete the revenue collection task in 2024.

It will also apply advanced technologies in the 4.0 to redesign the overall Customs IT System, build information technology solutions to support management requirements for imports and exports, and exit, entry and transit means of transport towards centralized management at the Customs.

Strengthen the fight against smuggling and trade fraud, risk management, post-clearance audit, inspection, contributing to increasing the revenue.

Build a professional and modern Customs administration to meet the requirements of customs reform and modernization; strictly comply with regulations in performing public duties.