There are still many problems for specialized inspection

A Customs officer of the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City is checking imported goods. Photo: T.H.

Deputy Director of the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City Dinh Ngoc Thang said that related to the inadequacies in the specialized inspection for import and export goods, the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City collected actively problems to report, recommend many competent authorities. In particular, they reported the status of specialized inspection and recommended to Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam in the meeting with the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City in August 2016.

In September 2016, a report on the current status of specialized inspection for export and import goods with the delegation of National Assembly of Ho Chi Minh City in the city to recommend to the functional agencies to adjust and supplement the inadequate regulations of specialized inspection soon; November, 2016, the unit advised the City People's Committee issue document 6566/UBND-KT dated on November 16th, 2016 directing the relevant agencies of the city to strengthen coordination in implementing the specialized inspection for the export and import goods at HCM City.

In addition, the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City and the Customs Branches directly under the Department organized to meet, dialogue with the business community. Since February 2017, they has made plans to meet regularly and periodically 400 large enterprises with large export turnover and large State budget payment to listen to the reflection of the enterprises on the difficulties, inadequate related to importing and exporting activities, including problems about specialized inspection, to take measures to remove them within their competence and propose to functional agencies when these difficulties were beyond their competence.

According to the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City, although there were many recommendations, some specialized management agencies noted, there were changes in policy mechanism, regulations on specialized inspection have not been adjusted to change the method of specialized inspection basically as required by Resolution 19/2016 and Resolution 19/2017 of the Government, such as: List of specialized inspection goods before customs clearance has been still too much; The risk management principle of specialized inspection has not been implemented; the specialized inspection results of the famous exporters in the export country, the inspection and analysis results of the advanced countries have not been recognized; there have been still situations that a product must be made procedure by many agencies of specialized inspection…

At present, there have been too many legal documents on specialized management and inspection causing many difficulties for the enterprises and the Customs. According to the reviewing result, there were 414 legal documents related to specialized management and inspection by April 2017.

In addition to prolonging the customs clearance time, the above-specialized inspection for imported goods has become a burden on cost of the enterprises actually, and, if the opportunity cost of the enterprises, the cost of relevant agencies and organizations were calculated, the total social cost for specialized inspection of export -import goods would be extremely large, but, the result of violation detection in specialized inspection would be very small, only 0.035% - 0.47%.

The Customs Department of HCM City will continue to work with the specialized inspection agencies and the port businesses, and to enhance and expand the two existing specialized inspection sites in terms of scale as well as quality of operation, to complete specialized inspection information portal to ensure the management requirements and continue to reduce the customs clearance time at some stage to facilitate the enterprises.

According to a representative of the Central Institute of Economic Management, from the recommendations of the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City for specialized inspection, the specialized management Ministries have received and corrected many related issues. However, in reality, the enterprises still face many problems in specialized management. This is also the content that the Government is very interested in and put forward in the content of guidance in Resolution 19.

At the meeting, the delegation continued to acknowledge many inadequacies and problems in specialized inspection proposed by the Customs Department of Ho Chi Minh City.