Customs officers of Bac Giang Industrial Parks Customs Branch (Bac Ninh Customs Department) at work. Photo: Quang Hung

Revenue declines

From the beginning of the year to May 15, 2023, Bac Giang Industrial Parks Customs Branch has processed 151,024 import-export declarations, equivalent to a trade turnover of US$13.187 billion.

Tax amount paid to the state budget through the Branch reached VND 588.16 billion or 30.96% of the assigned target (VND1,900 billion).

According to statistics from the Bac Ninh Customs Department, by the end of April, Bac Giang province saw a decrease in revenue compared to the same period in 2022. Specifically, import-export turnover fell 13% year-on-year to reach US$12.5 billion.

Of which, the taxable turnover plummeted 31% year-on-year to US$167 million. This is also the reason why the budget revenue in this province reached VND517 billion (down 26% year-on-year), equal to 27% of the assigned target (VND1,900 billion).

According to the analysis of the leader of Bac Ninh Customs Department, the budget revenue through the areas in 2023 has been greatly affected, including Bac Giang province.

That is, the decrease in the supply and demand of import and export goods in the international market, leading to a significant decrease in import and export turnover through Bac Giang province and taxable turnover compared to the same period in 2022. Besides, enterprises' production and business activities in the first quarter of 2023 faced many difficulties when the price of raw materials, fuel, materials, freight, and logistics soared, increasing production costs and inflation pressure, reducing orders and increasing potential risks to the production of enterprises.

According to Bac Ninh Customs Department, if the proposal of the Ministry of Finance on reducing the VAT rate by 2% for all goods and services subject to the 10% tax rate (to 8%) is approved, it will also affect the revenue.

Particularly in the first quarter of 2023, the total import-export turnover and the taxable turnover in Bac Giang province have a big difference due to the specific characteristics of the branch with diverse import-export types, focusing mainly on importing production materials; importing raw materials for export processing and production; import machinery and equipment; exporting processed and manufactured products for export.

To grasp the difficulties of enterprises and properly assess the budget collection, Bac Giang Industrial Parks Customs Branch has actively worked with 22 enterprises with great contributions. Thereby, 15 of total 22 enterprises saw a decrease in tax payable in the first quarter of 2023 over the same period last year by VND104.87 billion.

Some enterprises such as B.V Co., Ltd., S.V Co., Ltd. contributed VND 197.5 billion in 2022 because they were in the stage of building factories, and importing high-value machines to serve the heavy industry. However, in 2023, the company have come into stable operation and is not expected to import more machines.

Developing solutions for trade facilitation

According to the Bac Giang Industrial Parks Customs Branch, market problems, orders, unit prices and export market, have caused a lack of orders since the fourth quarter of 2022, only ensuring about 35-50% of production capacity, the remaining orders have also been suspended by partners. This makes businesses reduce production scale, lay off workers and rotate jobs. It is assessed that the difficulty is expected to last until the end of the second quarter of 2023.

Therefore, Bac Giang Industrial Parks Customs Branch has requested all officials and civil servants to strictly implement Directive 479 of the General Department of Customs on implementing synchronous and drastic measures to facilitate trade to improve the effectiveness of state management and prevent revenue loss.

Focusing on reforming administrative procedures, facilitating trade activities; strengthening customs value management; reviewing and checking goods names, codes and tax rates; reviewing and examining cases of tax exemption, tax reduction, tax refund, non-collection and non-taxable.

In which, reviewing and withdrawing exempted, reduced and refunded tax amounts for the wrong beneficiaries; carrying out the supervision of processed, manufactured goods for export; bonded warehouse, off-airport terminal, goods transportation under customs supervision. Furthermore, strengthening fight against smuggling, trade fraud, post-clearance audit, specialized inspection and internal examination.

In the coordination of budget collection, the Bac Giang Industrial Parks Customs Branch has coordinated and signed the regulations on collection cooperation with the Bac Giang State Treasury; developed regulations on information coordination in the budget collection stage; publicize the phone number of the public servant in charge of accounting to businesses and related units in order to provide accurate tax payment information, avoid errors in the state budget payment.