Reconstruction the IT system of Customs sector

The construction of the Customs IT system aims set to deal with the requirements of today as well as future trends of IT.

Over the years, the Customs sector has been a leader in applying IT in State management, recognised and appreciated by the Party, State, Government and business community.

The Customs sector has built an IT system to support most basic operations (customs procedures, tax payment, automatic management of goods, providing online public service and implementation of the National Single Window mechanism) effectively serving the work of direction and administration; reducing customs clearance time for imported and exported goods, means of transport on entry and exit; publicity and transparency of the customs authorities’ activities.

However, there are some shortcomings that need to be overcome such as: the current IT system can only basically meet the functions of data collection of enterprises, lacks warning functions, isnot integrated with other business systems, the consistency between systems is inadequate, the application of IT has not been applied to all management areas yet, system redundancy is not high and there are system security issues.

Hence, the General Department of Vietnam Customs has convened more than 100 customs officials at provincial customs departments to determine professional problems (from 8-12 April), to help build IT systems of the Customs sector for meeting the management requirements of the Customs.

Deputy Director General of Vietnam Customs Mai Xuan Thanh said that the spirit of building an IT system in the new period is to build a new and automatic model, ensuring the work of customs management.

To ensure the progress and quality of construction of overall IT system, the Deputy Director General requested thatcustoms officials participating in this work focus to determine the overall professional problems from which to meet all the above requirements.

The restructuring of the IT system of the Customs sector is derived from the actual situation. According to the authorised Director of Customs Control and Supervision Department Au Anh Tuan, local customs officials have to use 21 different types of software. To clear a shipment, customs officials carrying out procedures have to regularly open about 10 types of software. Meanwhile, the current IT system does not cover all the management areas of Customs; legal regulations have changed but the system has not caught up.

Therefore, the IT system in the Customs sector in the future must facilitate customs officials to carry out the procedures, supplement warning signs to serve decision making.

“For example, an item may be categorised into different codes and values, when such a situation exists, the system will make a warning to assist analysts in making unusual signs; or relating to intellectual property issues, the system also gives a warning for noting when checking... It means that the management requirements given to the IT system will support maximally the work of customs officials needd to perform and ensure that the situation is controlled. This IT system is expected to handle all current IT shortcomings as well as provide best management and support tools”- Tuan stressed.

It is expected that the General Department of Vietnam Customs will conduct research to build professional problems under management topics, including 12 core areas of customs management.

They include customs clearance; processing, export production and export processing enterprises; supervision of import and export goods and means of transport on entry and exit via airway; supervision of import and export goods and means of transport on entry and exit via seaway; supervision of import and export goods and means of transport on entry and exit by land, inland waterway and waterway; supervision of import and export goods and means of transport on entry and exit via railway; supervision of goods taking out and putting into warehouses, yards, locations; postal goods, express delivery; transit and transshipment goods; goods temporarily imported and re-export; other temporary import and re-export goods, customs procedures, inspection and supervision for imported and exported petrol and oil, temporary import and re-export, transshipment; petrol and oil supply to export processing enterprises, aircraft, ships; petrol stored at bonded warehouses, import and export petrol at floating buoys).