Many enterprises were denied proposal of pre-determining HS code
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Many case of rejection, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has a clear notification of that giving specific instructions on dossiers, procedures. Photo: T.Trang |
For example, like the case of Vietnam Dairy Products Joint Stock Company - Vinamilk, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has just rejected the request to pre-determine HS code of goods of this enterprise with the item "unsweetened pasteurized fresh milk (1lit/box)” due to information about goods, samples and product packaging not being consistent.
Specifically, on May 30, 2019, Vinamilk submitted an application to pre-determine the HS code for the item "unsweetened pasteurized fresh milk (1lit/box)”. However, the information on the item was not consistent between the design of packaging attached in the application and actual goods sample. The packaging of the sample showed the item name as Uchante 3.5%.
Continuing on June 24, 2019, the company sent a request for pre-determining code with product sample. However, the product sample had two layers of packaging. The inner packaging layer represents the item name as Uchante 3.5%. The outer packaging covered the inner packaging layer which presented the information as pasteurized fresh milk.
The General Department of Vietnam Customs said that information on goods provided by Vinamilk such as goods name, sample and product packaging were not consistent with each other. Therefore, they refused to pre-determine goods code and returned the dossier of this company.
Or in the case of Aviation products and maintenance JSC, the company requested to pre-determine codes for 3 different products while the regulations stipulated only one application for one item.
According to the provisions of Clause 3, Article 1 of Circular 39/2018/TT-BTC dated April 20, 2018, amending and supplementing a number of articles in Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC of the Ministry of Finance: "Dossiers and product samples requesting pre-determined goods code including: the application of pre-determining the code complied with the form No. 01/XĐTMS/TXNK Appendix VI enclosed with this Circular; one copy of the technical document provided by the organization or individual requesting for pre-determination (the analysis of goods, catalogs and product images); the product sample that is expected to be exported or imported (if any).”
However, recently, when submitting a request for pre-determining goods codes to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, a number of enterprises such as: T&T Vina Co., Ltd; HoGuong Investment, Tourism and Import Export one member company limited; Hai Phong LG Electronic Co., Ltd; Amway Vietnam Co., Ltd., have not attached technical documents and missed information on the application. Those were very important criteria to serve as a basis for classification and pre-determining goods codes. Therefore, if a company missed any of the criteria in the application when declearing, the dossier would be rejected because it did not meet the conditions to pre-determine goods code.
It is known that the pre-determination of goods codes was a public service of the General Department of Vietnam Customs. It was also an international standard for trade facilitation, an important tool of trade facilitation that was recommended by the Revised Kyoto Convention and regulated in a number of Free Trade Agreements. It has been applied by Vietnam Customs to support enterprises in proactively calculating business efficiency and reducing compliance costs.
The implementation of pre-determining has brought benefits to both Customs and enterprises. Customs authorities improve productivity and management efficiency by accelerating the speed of customs clearance, allocating resources approriately in the stages of pre-clearance, clearance and post-clearance. Meanwhile, enterprises will base on the provided information in advance for market research, business planning and profit calculation. This would increase the certainty and predictability for businesses when participating in international trade transactions.
For the case of rejection, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has a clear notification, of that giving specific instructions on dossiers, procedures and ways of collecting samples if enterprises continue requesting pre-determining goods codes.
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