Vietnam’s customs sector will spur reform and modernization to slash time and money spent by importers and exporters on the current procedures that are mostly manually processed.
 |
| A customs officer processes electronic goods clearance in the northern province of Lang Son. Vietnam’s customs sector will spur reform and modernization to slash time and money spent by importers and exporters on the current manually processed procedures. |
Many importers and exporters at a recent seminar in HCMC complained about the time-consuming customs procedures and a labyrinth of tax paperwork that have caused long delays for goods clearance, and thus forced import-export firms to pay more for this.
Tran Thoang, senior expert at the General Department of Customs, said the on-going E-Customs program and other planned clearance procedures would help cope with this problem pretty soon.
The Vietnamese customs may apply the Advance Rulings that have been in use in developed countries including the U.S., Singapore, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, Thoang said. “That procedure will provide advance and predictable information for companies to facilitate compliance with the customs requirements.”
The Advance Rulings, including the advance good classification and determining the origin of goods and goods valuation, means importers won’t have to wait for the shipment arrival to begin the goods declaration.
According to Thoang, the new method will benefit importers and exporters in terms of customs clearance with little or without delay, decreasing and simplifying import and export documentation requirements.
“However, the new form will have to wait for the development of the E-Customs program which is being test run with 800 enterprises taking part. The E-Customs project will complete infrastructure in 2011 and after that, there will be tens of thousands importers and exporters do the customs clearance on the Internet,” he said.
According to the International Marine Organization, the import procedures by sea takes from 22 to 46 documents.
