National Single Window – a driving force for reform

The 34th meeting of the Technical Group of ASEAN Single Window in Manila, the Philippines in February – 2016. (Photo: Huy Hoang)

From the story of transportation sector

The NSW is a convenient environment which enables users to make declarations, send messages and dossiers to a receiving, processing and results producing station for procedure completion with related agencies. The NSW is not only the accomplishment of the Government’s ASEAN Single Window commitments but also an important measure for reformation, simplification of procedures and a decrease in imports and exports clearance time as targeted by the Government. Against the background of several ministries’ standstill, the NSW is a driving force for a throrough reform.

Implementation of the NSW over the past years shows that the associated units’ performance has been significantly improved on receiving the Government and Ministries’ leaders drastic directions. The Ministry of Transport is a typical example with the biggest number of dossiers processed via the NSW (excluding Customs dossiers).

Recalling the past activities, for formal connection of the NSW at sea ports – the leading units were path-finders in NSW implementation in Viet Nam, the preparation had a series of difficulties due to unclear contact points (a department in charge of IT under the Ministry of Transport or Vietnam Maritime Administration). Therefore, it was likely to fail to conduct the connection of the NSW at the planned time of early November, 2014 as directed by the Government. In that context, the Director General and a Customs mission scheduled to work with the Vice-Minister of Transport, Mr. Nguyen Hong Truong in August, 2014. At the working session, representatives from related departments of the Ministry of Transport reported the situation and estimated the time for NSW connection as December, 2014. However, the Vice-Minister Nguyen Hong Truong directed his units to carry out connection of the NSW in November, 2014 for facilitating the business community and gradually implementing the Prime-Minister’s requirements of procedure simplification and reduced clearance time. Notably, Mr. Nguyen Hong Truong also gave strong directions to expand the NSW to all fields of the Ministry of Transport in a prompt manner.

Thanks to drastic directions in the spirit of reformation, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Finance connected the NSW on November 12th , 2014 as scheduled. Especially, upon the connection, the business community witnessed an emulation movement in performing the NSW in various fields of the Ministry of Transport. Beside Vietnam Maritime Administration, others such as Viet Nam Register, Vietnam Inland Waterway Administration were all involved.

Sharing with Customs News’ reporter, Mr. Nguyen To An – Head of the Division of Vehicles Quality under Viet Nam Register revealed that NSW implementation was an important driving force to promote his unit’s administrative formalities reform. Although the Viet Nam Register was not the leading unit in the NSW performance, this unit made the plan to implement the NSW in a uniform manner on careful preparation, study and learning lessons from previous performance in other fields. From the formal implementation date (August 1, 2015) until Mid August, 2016, there have been 836 traders with 11,437 dossiers of 103,799 means of transport having conducted transactions via the NSW. This number accounted for over 90% of traders and dossiers relating to imported vehicles at Viet Nam Register. Some cases that did not undergo transactions via the NSW were mainly small enterprises with small volume of imports or non-commercial imports.

“Playing into full play the NSW achievements, Viet Nam Register is further carrying out 4 level public service in terms of the rest of the fields in a prompt way” added Mr. To Nhu An.

Plenty of challenges remain

The NSW has brought initial benefits for the business community, making a significant contribution to promotion of administrative formalities reform, raising State management efficiency, facilitating trade and enforcing the economy’s competiveness.

Nevertheless, in addition to the aforesaid achievements, there are still various difficulties and challenges as commented by the General Department of Customs, the Standing Agency of the National Single Window and ASEAN Single Window Steering Committee. The challenges can be listed such as non-uniformity, inappropriateness and failure to catch up with commercial trends and lack of standards in methods, as well as management mechanisms by certain ministries. The typical case is the current specialized inspection mechanism which is still complicated and has not facilitated traders and people. Some related units and traders are not ready to make changes for a transparent and efficient environment. This creates one of the barriers for development.

Non-uniform development in terms of IT infrastructure and applications among ministries and agencies also raise problems in getting involvement, and linkage of all units in the NSW.

Uniform involvement of related stakeholders needed

For development approaching the standards, ranking criteria, performance indicators of clearance and release time of advanced countries in the region such as Singapore and Malaysia, enhancement of the NSW efficiency is a very important measure. In addition, it is necessary to have strong, uniform and timely changes by functional units, particularly ministries and agencies which have a modest number of traders and procedures undergoing the NSW.

A series of important tasks have been conducted in a uniform manner. They are as follows: Personnel related completion of the NSW Steering Committee toward merging the NSW and Trade Facilitation on the basis of completing the specialized inspection mechanism; publication of the Comprehensive Implementation Plan for the period 2016 – 2020, then making in details programs and action plans for each ministry. The legal framework should be further completed. The NSW should be expanded to all the ministries and agencies and concerned stakeholders who would officially take part in the ASEAN Single Window and prepare to connect with other trading partners in accordance with international commitments to whichViet Nam has already acceded…