The deployment of National Single Window in Agriculture sector: overcoming difficulties to create breakthroughs

What are the effects and impacts of these procedures to the State management agencies as well as the business community? How will MARD promote implementation of administrative procedures under the NSW in the near future? To clarify these issues, reporter of Customs News had a discussion with Mr. VuongDucHinh, Deputy Chief of Permanent Administrative Reform Office, MARD.

In the past, what are the positive results of the 9 administrative procedures implemented by the NSW, sir?

For the NSW, the number of records that the units under the Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development has received and resolved through the National Single Window Portal is sizeable. Specifically, until September 19th,27,930 records were received through the Portal. In particular, 22,022 records were resolved and issued licenses/electronic certifications, 5,928 records are in progress.

Basically, instead of having some malfunctions and problems during the early stage, the applying of these procedures under the NSW is relatively smooth at the moment. On the side of State management agencies, officers do not have to handletons of paperwork as previous, thanks to the NSW, and also the internal stages can supervise each other. In addition, the paperwork is not interrupted for any reasons anymore, for example: the chairman/director is absent and not able to sign the paper, but now when the digital signature is used, the chairman/director can handle the paperwork everywhere.

On the side of the business community, the benefits are also seen quite clearly when declaring electronic records instead of sending paper records via mail or direct records submission. It is worth noting that, when the NSW is applied, many types of cumbersome documents and papers has been simplified, integrated, or obliterated, which creates more convenience for the business community.

Could you please tell us, what are the difficulties and obstacles in deployingthe NSW in MARD?

One obstaclethat should be removed as soon as possible is in the payment stage. At the moment, all the units in MARD still have to receive payments either directly or via a semi-manual system which create links between the management agencies’ and enterprises’ accounts. According to the law, after finishing the procedures, the enterprises must pay fees before receiving approval. In some cases, the fee is not much, but the enterprises still have to conduct the fully paid operation if they want their work resolved, this is quite time-consuming.

In fact, following the spirit of the implementation of administrative procedures level 4, enterprises only need to pay through treasuries or banks and the system will make payments, clear balance and report to the specialized management units automatically. However, this process cannot be done so far. Both management units and enterprises are looking forward to the Ministry of Finance soon having specific guidelines on this issue, complete the payment of fees to create more favourable conditions for deploying the NSW.

For the NSW, difficulties have also come after the pilot phase, the deployment of the NSW on the national scale is not a simple problem. It is because of the different competencies of enterprises. Many enterprises are very professional, but a significant number of enterprises are too small and have limited competency.

One of the emerging problems notmentionedis that at present, with the cases of some markets outside of ASEAN, such as US, EU, Japan, etc., because the partners of our enterprises do not accept electronic licenses and still require to use paper licenses, in the deployment of many NSW procedures, the management agencies have to issue the paper licenses for enterprises. MARD is instructing relevant units, such as the Plant Protection Department, National Agro-aqua-forestry Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqad), etc., to take the initiative to contact the overseas markets in order to seek to remove, and find solutions and report to the Ministry to gradually resolve the issue.

MARD sets the target that fromOctober 1st, the entire 9 administrative procedures applied by the NSW willswitch completely to electronic records and not receive paper records anymore. Is this possible, sir?

From now to October 1st, time is running out. Therefore, the above target is mainly an attempt to urge all units to accelerate the deployment of the procedures applied by the NSW after the pilot phase. The achievement of the above target is a major problem.

The difficulties are not only from the procedure, but also from filing. How to file the records is also a matter of concern when it is not clear that it is better to save the records on compact disks or on computer hard disks. In the transfer phase, some procedures are processed electronically completely, but there are still many procedures which are processed both electronically and traditionally. MARD is developing regulations to operate separately on the deployment of the NSW, which will be specified to ensure consistency of the management of the Ministry or other units and the National Single Window Portal as prescribed.

Could you please share more about how MARD will promote the expanded deployment of the NSW procedures in the near future?

For the procedures applied by the NSW, MARD is requesting ] subordinate units to expand the enterprise number to deploy, the goal is to be applied on anational scale.

For examplethe Plant Protection Department, after the pilot phase at the Quarantine Station NoiBai, at present, the Department is focusing to continue to expand to other centers across the country. Until then, all enterprises that need to do all of the related procedures will join the NSW. After the deployment process in the Animal Health Agency Region II HaiPhong, the Animal Health Department, in cooperation with the Customs Information Technology and Statistics Department, the National Single Window Portal and Viettel Corporation, conducted training for officers from other Animal Health Agencies, and training for the business community at the same time to expand the deployment in Ho Chi Minh city, Can Tho, Da Nang and Ha Noi.

In addition to boost the implementation of the procedures, from now to the end of the year,there will be two new procedures applied by the NSW, bringing the total number of administrative procedures applied by the NSW to 11, which are: Issuing the Quarantine Certificate of imported animal products (over 25,000 documents/year), conducted at the Veterinary offices of the Animal Health Department; and Quarantine Registration of animal products for the importers into Vietnam (4,500 documents/year), conducted at the Animal Health Department.

In the longer-term plan, which procedures will be applied by the NSW by MARD, sir?

With the addition to the procedures, as planned, in the period of 2016 to 2018, MARD will deploy an additional 28 administrative procedures applied by the NSW. It is expected that the fund for this phase is about 80 billion VND, taken from the State budget.

Thank you, sir!