Random enterprises to take survey about evaluating compliance cost of customs procedures

The survey about evaluating compliance costs of customs procedure will help General Department of Vietnam Customs to continue reforming and increasing transparency in customs clearance. Photo: N.Linh

The survey includes: Official cost is the cost paid by actual money of enterprise for implementing procedures, this cost is counted into the reasonable and valid costs of the enterprise. The unofficial cost is the cost that does not follow regulations and does not count into the reasonable and valid costs of enterprises.

Enterprises complain about paying non-regulatory costs

In fact, the cost occurred in the process of implementing customs procedures is not only managed by the state management agencies including customs authorities, but also particularly concerned by the enterprises. It shows the satisfaction of enterprises when contacting public authorities.

In the survey of enterprises' satisfaction on implementing import and export administrative procedures in 2018 conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) coordinating with the General Department of Vietnam Customs and USAID Project, they spend time finding out the situation of paying non-regulatory costs of enterprises in the process of implementing import and export procedures (this is a general assessment for the entire chain of activities in the import-export process of enterprises). Regarding the results received, enterprises have reflected on the issue of non-regulatory costs in the process of implementing import and export procedures.

Among more than 2,800 enterprises providing information for the above survey, 56% of enterprises said that they did not pay the non-regulatory cost, 26% enterprises chose the "do not know" option, 18% of enterprises admitted to paying non-regulatory costs. Among enterprises providing information on the question of whether to pay non-regulatory costs when implementing customs procedures or not, 497 enterprises said that they have to pay this type of expense when implementing customs procedures, accounting for 18%, 212 enterprises said that they pay non-regulatory costs when implementing specialized management and inspection procedures.

Regarding the question, is there a possibility of discrimination if the enterprise does not cover non-regulatory costs? The answer is 52% of enterprises said that they would not be discriminated if they did not pay the non-regulatory cost, 34% of enterprises did not know whether they were discriminated or not, only 15% of enterprises said that they would be discriminated if they were not paying non-regulatory cost when implementing import-export procedures (while 31% of enterprises are discriminated if they do not pay non-regulatory cost when implementing customs procedures in 2015).

The non-regulatory cost payment affects the overall satisfaction of enterprises when implementing procedures at Customs authorities. The surveyed enterprises said that having to pay non-regulated costs resulted in significantly low satisfaction levels compared to remaining enterprises.

Continuing surveying enterprises’ opinions

With the purpose of promoting administrative reform toward the Government’s policies in order to reduce costs for the business community and improve the effectiveness of state management of Customs, Customs authorities have conducted assessments about compliance costs of administrative procedures in customs field from the side of enterprises. The assessment has been conducted for customs procedures (at level of General Department, Department and Branch) since the beginning of 2019 till the time of the survey.

In order to implement it, the General Department of Vietnam Customs issued documents to provincial customs departments for deploying to the business community. The scope of the survey is carried out for customs procedures implemented by enterprises at customs departments from January 1, 2019 to July 31, 2019. In order to make the survey process transparent, for each procedure, the General Department of Vietnam Customs requested at least 30 enterprises (which have implemented the procedures) to participate in the evaluation. Enterprises are randomly selected in the list of enterprises carrying out procedures at the Department, Branch (in case the number of enterprises is less than 30 for each procedure, the Customs authority would survey all businesses that come to do procedures). In case the percentage of enterprises answering the survey is under 50%, the Customs authority will expand the number of enterprises participating in the evaluation named in the list of enterprise implementing procedures at the unit. Those enterprises have not been invited to participate in the survey before.

Specifically, the survey paper will focus on the contents of time and cost when: Studying procedures (Does it take time and cost for enterprises to study procedures in order to complete procedures; time and cost that enterprise has to pay for studying procedures - if any); Preparing documents (time and cost to prepare documents for customs procedures; time and cost of preparing documents for specialized management procedures (if any); document submission, adjusting, supplementing and completing documents; receiving results.

The Customs authorities also reserve an important part to conduct surveys on non-official costs. Accordingly, the surveyed content focuses on the question at what stage is the non-official cost usually paid in the process of customs clearance; Do similar companies in the industry pay non-official fees in the process of implementing this procedure; Business proposal for cutting off unofficial costs.

In addition, the Customs authority also surveyed the issue of Regulatory Risk cost of enterprises such as: enterprises have to pay additional costs, damage or loss of business opportunities that businesses have to suffer due to poor quality of regulations resulting in penalties or delays in handling procedures; What is the level of payment?

According to the General Department of Vietnam Customs, the assessment results will help Customs authorities study and propose solutions to continue reforming customs procedures, cutting compliance costs for the business community, and at the same time improving integrity and transparency in customs clearance.