Violation of specialized inspection, enterprises suffer disadvantages

	It’s necessary to include the reform principles of specialized management and inspection to the law revision
	Enterprises suffering because of specialized inspection
	Quang Tri: Imported goods subjected to specialized inspection accounting for 65%

Inspecting imported goods at Cat Lai port. Photo: T.H.

Hundreds of enterprises with violations

According to Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) Customs Department, as of March 20, 2019, there were a total of 257 enterprises in violation of customs management policies for imported goods allowed to take to storage for waiting for the specialized inspection results. Among them, 241 enterprises are not allowed to bring goods to storage due to violations of customs management policies for goods subject to specialized inspection, and have not submitted the specialized inspection results beyond the 30-day time limit; 11 enterprises have supplemented the overdue results and are sanctioned for administrative violations and forbidden to take the goods to storage within 6 months from the date of issuing the sanctioning decision; 5 enterprises are forbidden to take goods to storage within 1 year.

Not only delaying in submitting the specialized inspection results, some enterprises also fled from the business address after being permitted to take goods to storage. According to our survey, among the enterprises owning specialized inspection results announced by the HCMC Customs Department, many enterprises take advantage of the regulations on taking goods to storage for selling to the market and flee from the registered business address. Typically, there is the case of Asia Food Import Export Trading Production Joint Stock Company (at Le Duc Tho Street, Ward 6, Go Vap District, Ho Chi Minh City). In July 2014, the company imported a shipment of more than 6.6 tons of mint candies via Cat Lai port. After being permitted to take the goods to storage, the company has not submitted the inspection results of food hygiene and safety to customs authority. Verifying and checking at the company’s registered business address, the customs authority discovered that the company no longer operates at this address, and the local tax authority also confirmed that the company has stopped operating.

Or the case of Quoc Viet Consulting-Trading-Service Co., Ltd., owning the specialized inspection results of 2 shipments imported in September, 2014 till now. Currently, the Customs authority has determined that this company no longer operates at the registered business address.

Enterprises suffer disadvantages

According to Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, the Department will not allow enterprises that delay submitting specialized inspection results to the customs authority, to take goods to storage, and will announce the list of these enterprises to local Customs units in the whole country. Thus, enterprises have to suffer a lot of disadvantages if they are not permitted to take goods to storage, they have to pay more container demurrage cost, storage cost, cost for sampling at port, affecting the business and production.

According to Ho Chi Minh City Customs Department, most of the enterprises taking a lot of time, is owing to overdue specialized inspection results for used special-use motorbikes, because the Registry Agency requires enterprises to supplement technical documents. For the submission of overdue specialized inspection results for objective reasons, the specialized inspection agency often issued a written confirmation of the reason for late submission. In this case, enterprises are not sanctioned.

On the enterprise side, some enterprises delay in presenting goods, providing additional vouchers and technical documents for the specialized inspection agency. For used goods (special-use motorbikes) it takes a lot of time to provide dossiers and documents to the specialized inspection agency and the responsibility assignment is not specified, leading to blaming each other between goods owners and the specialized inspection agency for late submission of specialized inspection results.

In the cases of overdue submission, the Customs authority will contact enterprises to urge the submission of the specialized inspection results, and contact the specialized inspection agency to determine the cause of late submission and the progress of goods inspection by the specialized inspection agency. And the Customs will visit the storages of enterprises (for storages in the management area) or send written requests to local Customs units for inspection of goods storage while waiting for the specialized inspections results.

For enterprises owning the specialized inspection results for long time, the Customs Branch where enterprises carried out the procedures, shall send written requests to the Public Security, Tax Authority, Departments of Planning and Investments to identify the operations of enterprises. However, the coordination among authorities is difficult due to the late response by those authorities.

Still not submitting result of specialized inspection for nearly 12 years VCN – According to the regulation, after having permission for receiving goods for reservation, enterprises must submit ...

From the above shortcomings, HCMC Customs Department proposed that the specialized inspection must have specific regulations on the maximum time for the presentation of goods and technical documents for inspection. If beyond the prescribed time limit, but the enterprises fail to implement, the Customs authority will not inspect shipments over the time limit, and release notices of ineligible shipments ...