Preventing fraudulent origin: Strictly control production capacity of enterprises

Mr. Au Anh Tuan - Acting Director of Customs Control and Supervision Department.

Could you please tell us the benefits and challenges brought to Vietnam in the trend of globalisation, especially the implementation of many FTAs like ​​today?

Currently, Vietnam has signed and participated in 14 FTAs, most recently the deal with the European Union (EVFTA).

According to the commitments of FTAs, goods exported from Vietnam enjoy preferential tariff rates. However, this also comes with the risk of goods from neighbouring countries, that could not enjoy preferential treatment, would brought to Vietnam in order to carry out some simple processing steps such as labeling, packaging, or simple assembly then export to a third country.

When the turnover of these commodities increases sharply compared to production capacity of enterprises, the risk of deploying measures of investigation by the import countries would be activated to implement safeguard measures and avoid the impact to the manufacturing industries of Vietnam.

With the responsibility of State management in customs, how did customs authorities take actions to detect and prevent fraudulent acts of origin?

By implementing the assigned tasks, especially the directives of the Prime Minister and leaders of Ministry of Finance in recent times, Customs authorities have been implementing measures to prevent fraudulent origin and illegal transport of goods.

Besides the measures recently mentioned by representatives of competent authorities of the General Department of Vietnam Customs, I would like to emphasise some other measures such as the fact the General Department of Customs has directed local customs departments to strengthen inspection and supervision when carrying out import and export procedures.

At the same time, the Customs authorities have strengthened efforts to collect business information such as production capacity to determine whether production capacity and export is practical or not. By monitoring the use of electricity, water, labour and some activities of importing raw materials we can determine whether the enterprise actually processes, produces or only performs some simple steps without carrying out specialised processing.

Leaders of the General Department of Vietnam Customs would the forces to conduct post-clearance audit, investigate or coordinate with competent authorities of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) to inspect before granting C/O certificates or checking export enterprises carefully to consider wether they are eligible to declare Vietnamese origin criteria or not.

In addition, in the future, Customs authorities will continue to coordinate with related ministries and agencies to amend documents related to origin issues to overcome obstacles and shortcomings.

Specifically, what were key contents related to origin of goods that were proposed to be amended by the customs authorities?

Customs authorities would propose to the Ministry of Industry and Trade to advise the Government amending the provisions of Decree 31/2018/ND-CP and amend Circular 05/2018/TT-BCT on origin of goods, thus providing reguations on rules of origin of goods producing in Vietnam that are put into the domestic market. Also, regulations of rules of origin for import – export goods.

At the same time, we are proposing to the Ministry of Science and Technology to advise the Government on amending the regulations about labeling of goods in Decree 31/2017/ND-CP, especially the extra labeled to avoid the situation of enterprises taking advantage when importing inappropriate label and permission to attach extra labels before put goods in to market. If this problem cannot be controlled tightly, enterprises may change information of origin, expiry dates to deceive and affect consumer rights.

Thank you so much!