Sector of Customs: Continue to carry out the commitment in the Declaration of Customer Service

Customs officers of Mong Cai Customs Department, Quang Ninh Customs Department guided new policies for businesses. Photo: T.Trang.

Promote the role of enterprises in supervision of law enforcement

The General Department of Customs with desire to pass the survey of enterprises will contribute comments on the aspects that have not been implemented in the implementation of commitments in the Declaration at customs offices at all levels. Identify commitments that have been made, not achieved, commitments that can be improved as well as the desire and needs of the business community for commitments and quality that should be met for the Customs Service.

According to the Committee on Customs Modernization Reform, the General Department of Customs assessed the implementation of commitments under the Declaration on Customer Service in the four categories of content Including: Professionalism (working style of civil servants, professional qualifications when carrying out procedures, attitude of contact with people / DN); Transparency (procedural information, law policy, public hot line, receiving problem solving, settlement of administrative procedures, dialogue with enterprises); Efficiency (clearance time, rate of goods inspection, administrative costs); Time to carry out administrative procedures (procedures for examination of dossiers, procedures for actual inspection of goods, procedures for handling tax exemption / reduction / refund dossiers, procedures for answering problems, procedures for settling complaints and denunciations).

For the evaluation of the quality of business support services, the General Department of Customs collected the opinions of enterprises in two areas: online public services (online public administrative procedures, utilities provided on-line portal and other software systems); support activities (handling of requests after working hours, support, answers, support at customs office, support at headquarters).

The results of the survey will be reviewed by the customs office every quarter, every six months and every year. The assessment was conducted according to the statistical method based on the total number of votes collected in the evaluation period, the enterprise information and rating scale for the evaluation contents, combining with the analysis of cause, reasons and recommendations of customers. For items with low marks, the units shall propose and elaborate measures to remove and report to the General Department on matters beyond their jurisdiction.

A solution for customs to reform

The survey of enterprises across the country on the implementation of commitments in the Declaration of customer service is one of the solutions for customs agencies to improve professionalism, transparency and efficiency in the implementation of customs clearance, as well as the promotion of monitoring among the parties. This is one of the activities of developing the partnership between customs and enterprises.

At the Customs-Business Seminar organized by the General Department of Customs last week in Hanoi, Deputy Director-General of Customs, Mai Xuan Thanh, said that partnering activities bring understanding, consensus and co-operation between the customs and the business community. In addition to the business community guide, the office of customs is also very interested in encouraging the business community to cooperate in building the customs to be increasingly better.

Prior to that, at the end of 2017, the General Department of Customs also organized a survey, assessing the implementation of some commitments in the Declaration of customer service. Survey results have attracted many useful comments from the business community. The focus of the survey is on commitments that have not been evaluated or being in need for additional evaluation. With specific indicators, the survey also collected a lot of positive comments from enterprises. For example, for the norm of completion of regular examination of documents (2 hours from the date of receipt of full dossier), there were 844 replies about the implementation of this commitment, of which 98% said they were accurately and quickly assessed, only 2% of performance evaluations were slower than commitment. Some causes of delay were assessed by the enterprises including: some customs officers carried out document process slowly due to many important records and problems from both the customs and enterprises.

For the norms of completion of the actual inspection of normal goods (8 hours from the time of full presentation of goods), there were 854 respondents, of whom more than 99% claimed faster commitment. For the criterion of completion of physical inspection of goods subject to specialized inspection (8 hours from the date of receipt of specialized inspection results), there were 837 respondents, almost all were assessed accurately and faster than the commitment (more than 99%). With the target of completion of physical inspection of goods in large quantity, multiple categories or complicated inspection (not exceeding 2 days), there were 826 respondents, Most respondents expressed it was right, and faster than the commitment ... Besides, most of the enterprises also expressed their opinions on the wish to satisfy the Customs such as: Commitment on appearance, costume of Customs officers, with 96,38% in agreement; Commitment on attitude and behavior, with 98.02% agreement; The criteria in the commitment to support customers have been approved by the company at about 97% ...

According to the assessment by the General Department of Customs, the implementation of the commitments in the customer service Statement, the provincial and municipal customs departments have implemented mechanisms to ensure the supervision of customers for their operations. The customs clearance through the solutions: publicly post the hotline of customs offices at all levels, the telephone numbers, addresses and emails of the members of the group to settle problems, complaints and denunciations; publicizing administrative procedures; implementing the single window for administrative and public services; receiving information from the business community via information channels; signing regulations on cooperation with business associations.