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Most of import enterprises in the field of crops and plants appreciate NSW.

Delay due to uncertainty

Thai Binh Seed Joint Stock Corporation often imports hybrid rice from China in November and December every year. The amount of hybrid rice imported is 500-600 tons. The time from filing to the time of issuing an import licence is only about 5 days, which is relatively convenient.

According to Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, an employee of Thai Binh Seed Joint Stock Corporation, from the end of last year to date, she joined 2 training courses of NSW held by the Department of Cultivation in cooperation with the relevant units, but the corporation hasn’t applied new processes in line with NSW. The reason is that during training the first time at the end of 2015, training activities took place quickly and companies only understood a little bit but were not really aware of the implementation steps. Also, applying for import licences in the form of paper records is one of the reasons why companies delay the application of NSW.

Speaking to a reporter of Customs Newspaper, Mrs. Le Thu Huong, an employee of Phu Gia Biotechnology Co,. Ltd. (specializing in importing mushrooms from Korea) said: “The company also participated in two training courses held by the Department of Cultivation. However, we have not applied NSW because based on market demand and seasonal time, the company imports mushrooms in October-November once every year. Since the company formally applied at the end of 2015, we haven’t had any import demands as yet.

In fact, after the procedures for "import licence of agricultural crops and plants" were applicable with NSW, there have been a large number of enterprises implementing. However, after about half a year, the companies face many problems. The problems mainly arise from the use of online registration software. Typically, enterprises must apply the digital signature to send the file but it’s still undeliverable; Attached file capacity which is sent to the national portal is limited to only 2 Mb, causing many difficulties for enterprises and other users.

Applicable in the future

Receiving feedback from enterprises and in order to help enterprises solve problems, the Department of Cultivation formally coordinated with the General Department of Vietnam Customs and Viettel Group to organize the second training for enterprises in the middle of June. After attending the training, Mrs. Huyen said that she was aware of the steps of implementation. "NSW operates more quickly than the old process, especially for far-away companies such as Thai Binh Seed Joint Stock Corporation. When making paper records, business leaders must sign and seal on the record before transferring the file for applying permits, but the new process using digital signatures should be more convenient. Next time, when importing new shipments, we will consider the application of NSW, "she said.

Sharing the same opinion, Mrs. Huong said that in fact, the application for import licences in the form of current paper records didn’t encounter any major problems, but the total time of nearly 2 weeks was still relatively long. In addition, due to the headquarters of the company in Thai Nguyen, in order to apply permits, the company must send the dossiers to Hanoi for representatives of the company in Hanoi to directly submit the dossiers to the Department of Cultivation. After that, the licence must be re-sent to Thai Nguyen once again. In this process, the company also called and tracked records of the company. All of them caused inconvenience for the company.

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"Application of NSW is expected to solve most of the problems mentioned above, helping the permit application to be simpler, so we will apply the new process when importing new shipments", Mrs. Huong emphasized.