Many businesses wish to participate in the Voluntary Compliance Program

Scene of the conference. Photo: Q.H

Member businesses improve compliance levels

On May 17, the General Department of Vietnam Customs organized a workshop to collect opinions to evaluate 2 years of implementing the Pilot Program to support and encourage businesses to comply voluntarily with customs laws (according to Decision 1399/ Decision-TCHQ dated July 15, 2022) to prepare for the Customs’ sector convention on summary of two years of implementing the Pilot Program to support and encourage enterprises to comply voluntarily with customs laws, towards official implementation.

The workshop was attended by representatives of the Risk Management Department (General Department of Vietnam Customs), representatives of the Department, leaders of branches under the Hanoi and Bac Ninh Customs Departments and 14 member enterprises operating import and export activities in areas managed by Hanoi and Bac Ninh Customs Departments.

At the seminar, a representative of the Risk Management Department presented the results of two years of implementing the Pilot Program to support and encourage businesses to comply voluntarily with customs laws.

Until now, the Customs authority has signed a memorandum of understanding with 295 businesses participating in the Pilot Program to support and encourage enterprises to comply voluntarily with customs laws.

Through implementation, the compliance level of many member businesses has improved compared to the time before participating in the Program, as well as maintaining the compliance level at level 2 (High Compliance), and level 3 (Average Compliance).

Accordingly, 101 enterprises raised their compliance levels from levels 3, 4, 5 (level 4: Low compliance; level 5: Non-compliance) to levels 2, 3, 4, accounting for 36.2% due to no recording of violations during the participation process or violations by the enterprise that have passed the evaluation time; 147 enterprises maintain compliance level, accounting for 50.86% (of which enterprises complying with level 2 and level 3 are 120 enterprises, accounting for 43.01%).

Thus, the compliance level of member businesses which has been increased and maintained compliance level (level 2, level 3) reached 80% of the total number of businesses participating in the Program.

Also from 2023 up to now, the situation of channeling declarations of member businesses has improved compared to before joining the Program (2022), the rate of document inspection and physical inspection of goods has decreased, helping businesses save money and reducing clearance time.

Aiming to increase the number of businesses participating in the Program

At the workshop, representatives of the Bac Ninh and Hanoi Customs Departments and businesses were interested in the conditions for participating in the program; communication work and preferential policies; and revocation of membership.

At the seminar, the leader of the Risk Management Department shared that, to participate in the Program, businesses must volunteer to participate in the Program first. At the same time, businesses must meet all conditions on turnover size, declaration frequency, and operating time.

Representatives of member businesses participated in the conference. Photo: Q.H

In the future, when officially implementing the Program, the General Department of Vietnam Customs aimed to increase the number of businesses participating in the Program.

At the workshop, some businesses were also interested in facilitation policies, especially declaration classification.

Regarding this issue, the leader of Risk Management Department said that the majority of businesses participating in the Program have had a significant increase in the number of green channel declarations, thereby shortening clearance time. For yellow and red channel declarations, Customs office has arranged a separate working area, thus helping improve clearance time for member businesses.

Regarding communication work, leaders of the Risk Management Department noted that many provincial and city customs departments have integrated dissemination about the Program's contents into business dialogue conferences, this was a way for Customs authority to provide training and troubleshooting for the business community in general and member businesses in particular.

In the future, the Risk Management Department will continue to advise the General Department of Vietnam Customs to organize training sessions for customs departments, customs branches and businesses on the Program contents.

Currently, at the level of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the Customs Department and customs branches have established teams to receive manual information from businesses.

Therefore, when the Program is officially implemented, businesses have problems and send comments via the online public service system, then the Customs authority would decentralize and resolve them according to their authority instead of implementing them manually.