Revenue collection at Lao Cai International Railway Station Customs Branch achieves 45%

Professional activities at Lao Cai International Railway Station Customs Branch. Photo: T.Bình

Turnover and tax increase together

A representative of Lao Cai International Railway Station Customs Branch (Lao Cai Customs Department) said that from the beginning of the year to May 6, the Customs Branch handled procedures for 25 enterprises, up 13.6 % over the same period in 2019 and the number of declarations was 754, an increase of 16.3%.

Notably, the increase of export turnover helped offset the decline in import activities and maintained overall momentum of import and export activities.

Import-export turnover reached nearly $101.8 million, up 13%, of that imports exceeded $22 million, down 9.4% but exports were more than $79.6 million, up 21.3%.

Thanks to fairly high export turnover, the revenue collection of the Customs branch (from the beginning of the year to May 6) reached VND 169.2 billion, up 7.2% compared to the same period of 2019 and hitting 45% of the target in 2020.

The results of revenue collection at the branch were a bright spot in the context of the reducing overall revenue of the whole customs sector and at Lao Cai Customs Department in particular.

The reason for the increase in export turnover at Lao Cai International Railway Station Customs Branch was largely due to the increase of yellow phosphorus with the growth of 21.4%.

Yellow phosphorus has been a key export item in Lao Cai for a long time. At Tang Loong Industrial Park (Bao Thang district), there are seven factories manufacturing yellow phosphorus with total capacity of up to 115,600 tonnes of yellow phosphorus a year, of that the major quantity was for export.

In 2019, the output of yellow phosphorus reached 99,729 tonnes and revenue hit VND 5,528.9 billion.

To improve the efficiency of manufacturing and business of yellow phosphorus, on December 11, 2019, the People's Committee of Lao Cai province allowed the establishment of the Yellow Phosphorus Association of Lao Cai (in Decision No. 4197/QD UBND). Recently, on March 25 , the meeting for establishing the association was officially held.

Ensuring customs clearance alongside pandemic prevention

The manager of Lao Cai International Railway Station Customs Branch Doan Thi Ngoc Ha said that to achieve the positive results of import – export activities and revenue collection in the unit in recent times, beside the objective reason, it was also thanks to timely directives from the leaders of Lao Cai Customs Department. At the same time, there is close and effective coordination between the Customs authorities and inter-sector forces at the border gates such as the Border Defence force, Quarantine and the Border Economic Authority.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the Customs Branch implemented seriously and synchronously the instructions of higher levels and actively developed plans to ensure the performance of the dual task of "preventing pandemics and cargo clearance".

Doan Thi Ngoc Ha added that to ensure cargo clearance, the unit has strengthened administrative procedure reform, received and handled procedures through online public services and enhanced grasping information and exchange with the business community.

With managing import and export activities through the railway, the unit has worked closely with the border forces in supervising and managing vehicle operators who transported goods from Lao Cai station to Son Yeu station (China) and vice versa. People working on trains during the pandemic only go to the point of delivery and receiving, the isolation area at the border gate and the isolation area at the station.

“As a result, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was no case of infection arising in the management area of the unit, while import and export activities were ensured in the context of increasing export volume,” Ha said.

According to Lao Cai International Railway Station Customs Branch, in May and in the future, when the pandemic is settled, import-export activities will be more prosperous and the unit will focus on solutions to boost trade to increase revenue collection, at the same time, still seriously implement measures to prevent and control the Covid-19 pandemic.