Pressure on budget revenue collection in the last months of 2016

	Ba Ria-Vung Tau Customs: Collecting nearly 13 billion vnd of tax arrears
	Ho Chi Minh City Customs: Many solutions to reach 950 billion vnd from post-clearance audit
	The Hai Phong Department of Customs strives for revenue collection of 48,940 billion vnd

Strengthening inspection and supervision is one of the measures against tax losses. Photo: T.Binh

Turnover rose but revenue fell

Strongly affected by the difficult economic context, for the main imported commodities, higher tax rates are all falling, especially crude oil prices fell more than budget estimates, along with signing of the Free Trade Agreements (FTA) which make the budget collection of Customs facing many challenges. In previous years, State budget revenues of Customs starting ascending in April, but in 2016, by contrast, in the last months of the year, the revenue is gradually declining.

In April, May and June 2016, the State budget collection of the whole sector fluctuated in the range of 22,500 to 23,500 billion vnd, from July onwards, this range was just from 20,500 to 21,500 billion vnd. This fact is due to the major revenues in the last months from oil and automobile imports fell, no longer as high as the first months of the year.

Careful analysis of two major import commodities - automobiles and gasoline show: The amount of petroleum imported in the first 9 months of 2016 reached 7.1 million tons, equivalent to 89% of the annual import plan, so the remaining months of the year are expected to import with less amount. Regarding imported cars, due to the special consumption tax rate on cars with large cylinder capacity has increased significantly from 1-7-2016 so enterprises imported a large amount of cars to "run" tax, which leads to the number of import cars with less than 9 seats in the last months of the year being low. Besides, vehicles with smaller cylinder capacity can be domestically manufactured so, although the Special consumption tax reduces, the volume of imports did not spike. The fact is that the number of imported vehicles in August and the first half of September also fell sharply compared to the previous month. By the end of September, the volume of imported automobiles fell by 7.3% in comparison with the same period in 2015 (only 77,515 vehicles), and decreased by 16.9% in value ($US 1.75 billion).

One of the notable changes is the import and export value for the months of 2016 increased, but revenues declined, compared to the same period in 2015. According to the analysis of the Import and Export Tax Department (General Department of Customs), although imports and exports turnover rose by 4.5% compared to the same period last year, revenue increased by only about 3.3%, mainly due to lower revenue from crude export oil. Import gasoline also fell in volume due to lower prices and tariffs than the same period in 2015. Besides, the import turnover of some major commodities with big amounts of revenue tends to decline over the same period of the previous year. In addition, there are other factors causing reduced revenue over the same period, such as crude oil prices, reducing tariff rates when joining the FTAs.

Drastically completed indicators

Forecasting the difficulties, the whole sector of Customs has adopted synchronous and drastic measures to ensure budget revenues also facilitate import and export activities, actively combating smuggling, trade fraud, strengthening PCA, price consultations by amended and supplemented category risk of value. In fact, the above measures have effectively helped the Customs sector to obtain the first 10 months State budget revenue of 215,760 billion vnd, 79.9% of the estimate, increased by 3.34% over the same period in 2015.

By 8-11-2016, according to statistics of the General Department of Customs, the State budget revenues of the entire sector reached about 220,295 billion vnd, equivalent to 81.41% of the estimate, almost the same with October 2015 at 80.52%. At this pace, the revenue of the November 2016 has the capability to be equivalent to the rate of November 2015 at 89%.

According to the situation assessment, there are 13 units unlikely to complete the estimate including Customs Departments of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Thanh Hoa, Lang Son, Ha Tinh, Quang Tri, Can Tho, Cao Bang, Quang Binh, Gia Lai, Dien Bien, Lao Cai, Binh Dinh, and Dong Thap.

Currently, some Customs departments with large amount of revenue like HCM City, Hai Phong, and Hanoi. However, Ba Ria - Vung Tau just reached over 80%. Specifically: Customs of HCM City reached 80.89%; Haiphong Customs reached 81.21%; Customs of Hanoi reached 86.82%.

Considering that the duty of budget collection during the last months of the year was very heavy, the whole Customs sector is fiercely deploying all necessary measures to fulfill the target revenue of 270,000 billion VND and strive for 275,000 billion VND target that the Ministry of Finance has allocated.

Repeatedly by directives of the Director, organizing conferences, implementing documents on guidance and direction, the General Department of Customs requested units to continue to persevere with proposed measures of State budget collection. In which, focusing on solutions to prevent losses: Combating losses over quantity, value and HS code, C/O, positively applying revenue management measures, urging debt collection.

Besides, to promote post-clearance audits, strengthen control against smuggling and trade fraud on key areas, focusing on inspection, internal inspection, controlling and applying risk management, strengthen inspection and supervision, tightening discipline in the Customs sector

In order to prepare for the “final sprint to the line”, local Customs departments are focusing their force to implement solutions to meet the assigned target of State budget revenue. In Quang Ninh, Customs launched the competition named "90-day sprint"; HCM City Customs is implementing measures to enhance PCA from the border gate for key imported commodities; Hanoi Customs focus on implementing solutions to reduce losses, such as: withdrawing and handling tax debt, inspections and supervisions…

In the first 10 months of 2016: Customs collected nearly 216 trillion vnd of revenue VCN- According to statistics of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the total budget revenue of Customs ...

By Thu Trang/Tuan Cuong