Vietnam Customs Efficiency Improvement: Major driven factor of trade facilitation in 2016

Quang Ninh Customs.

This is a significant capacity to enable trade of Vietnam that resulted in climbing 14 ranks to position of 73^rd among 136 countries in 2016. Together with a variety of international trade records, nowadays Vietnam is known as a successful story of trade liberalization and globalization (World Economics Forum, 2017).

The most contributed factor is border administration with strongly improved customs efficiency (now at 66^th) which cut down times for documentary and border compliance for both exporting and importing approximately 30 hours (see table 1). These changes integrate a wide range of innovations and efforts of the Vietnam’s Government and Customs to reinforce multiple border agencies cooperation, streamline procedures and reduce burden of inspections at border gates.

Table 1: Time and costs of customs clearance for exporting and importing of Vietnam in 2015 and 2016

(Source: World Bank, Doing business 2016 and 2017)

To be a key driven force in the WTO’ s Trade Facilitation Agreement negotiation and ratification of Vietnam (done on 15^th December, 2015), the GDVC are substantially fostering harmonization, standardization and modernization which creates an achievement of moving up 16 ranks to 86^th in the world.

In addition, the report points major bottlenecks and weakness of Vietnam in enabling and facilitating trade that requires this developing country to reduce sharply when TFA comes into force in early 2017. Inherently, burdensome customs procedures, tariff and non-tariff barriers, and corruption at the borders are top concerns of trade community in Vietnam. Furthermore, the OECD Trade Facilitation Indicators 2015 also revealed that Vietnam needs to focus on some principal milestones of trade facilitation which are involment of trade community; fees and charges; and external border agency cooperation.

Full report found here: https://www.weforum.org/focus/global-enabling-trade-report-2016?delete_local=40