Risk management – mandatory requirement in specialized inspection reform

	Support businesses in assessing and measuring compliance
	Introduce new model on quality and food safety inspection
	Customs expands compliance assessment

Binh Duong Customs officers inspect imported alcohol. Photo: Dang Nguyen

Comply with international practices

Article 4.7 of the Vietnam - EU Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA) states: “Each party shall carry out the procedures for goods inspection and release as well as post-customs clearance inspection on the basis of principles of risk assessment and inspection, rather than comprehensive inspection of each shipment to determine compliance with all import requirements. The parties agree to adopt and apply requirements and procedures for import, export, and transit and transshipment control based on the principles of risk management which are applied to take assessment measures on notable transactions”.

As such, the application of the risk management principle to specialized inspections is a mandatory requirement to carry out commitments in the EVFTA for decisions on customs clearance and releaseof goods. In other words, the application of specialized inspections for all imported shipments is inconsistent with EVFTA commitments. The criteria to apply risk management proposedin the scheme are in line with this EVFTA commitment.

Therefore, the scheme proposingto fully and substantially apply the principle of risk management in quality and food safety inspection for imported goods includes thefollowing contents:

Assessing risks in the import phase.Accordingly, assessingby selection criterion for overseas exporters and manufacturers. Through this activity, the specialized inspection agency will have a source of information to create a long-term and complete database to identify goods according to different levels of risk since they are imported into Vietnam to introduceappropriate management measures and prevent risks;

Assessing law complianceof enterprises importing goods subject to quality and food safety inspection.Accordingly, the specialized inspection agency bases on the history of quality and food safety inspections for imported goods to identify which importers comply well with the law and which importers regularly violate the law and have high risks in importing goods subject to specialized inspections, thereby facilitating or intensifying inspections for importers according to different levels of risk;

Building a list of risky goods for each specialized management field: through analysis and evaluation to identify which origin, risk levels of goods and infringing goods for inspection and exemption from inspection. The management ministries shall coordinate and provide the Customs agency with risk information to apply "integrated" risk management in quality and food safety inspection.

5% random inspections to assess compliance

The principle of risk management will be applied in the direction of conducting random inspections of not more than 5% to assess law compliance of enterprises importing goods subject to quality and food safety inspection.

Customs will mobilize resources to inspect and control goods of enterprises that do not comply with the law, commit to trade fraud, and risky and potentially infringing consignments. For those whocomply with the law on import and export activities, the shipments without risk will be subject to a simple inspection method, thereby reducing customs clearance time and costs for import procedures.

In order to improve compliance of enterprises, ensure the controlling role of state management agencies, the scheme proposes the application of the principle of risk management in quality and food safety inspectionsfor imported goods through conducting random inspections on less than 5% of goods subject to quality and food safety inspection.

Customs will be focal point carrying out procedures for enterprises VCN- Facing the current specialized inspection, to improve the quality of inspection for import and export goods ...

Accordingly, the customs agency conducts quality and food safety inspectionsfor cases with signs of violation or conduct random inspections (less than 5%) to assess the compliance of the customs declarant. Those inspections are significant for raising compliance with the law of enterprises because the customs agency can carry out inspections at any time even though imported goods are entitled to exemption of inspection and imported goods that have been converted to normal or reduced inspection.