Commenting on the draft of the programme to support businesses in compliance with customs laws, jointly organised by the General Department of Customs and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on October 28, southern businesses highly appreciated this programme and were excited to participate in it.

Businesses asked many questions about the programme to support businesses
in compliance with customs laws. Photo: T.H

The programme will be piloted this year

At the conference, the Risk Management Department under the General Department of Customs detailed the draft programme and assessment criteria to more than 200 southern businesses.

This programme aims to improve the compliance level of businesses in export, import and transit of goods; guide, support, and provide information and tools to help them self-assess and improve their compliance; create favourable conditions for them to voluntarily comply with customs procedures under customs laws; and strengthen Customs - Business partnership in export and import activities and expand and bring support activities to become a regular task of customs agencies at all levels, the Risk Management Department said.

It is expected that in the first phase, from the date the programme is signed by the leader of the General Department of Customs to December 31, 2020, the programme will be piloted for two groups of businesses: businesses engaged in import, export and transit of goods meet concurrently criteria: import and export turnover of US$4 million or more and 100 import and export declarations or more in 2019; and businesses engaged in customs regimes of import, export for export processing and production: import regimes E11, E15, E21, E31; export regimes: B11, E42, E52, E62 including two groups: small and medium-sised businesses and businesses that comply with the regulations on the origin of exports.

In the second phase, from 2021 onwards, the programme will be extended to all businesses engaged in export and import activities.

To step by step improve the level of compliance of businesses towards voluntary compliance with the provisions of Circular 81/2019 / TT-BTC dated November 15, 2019 of the Ministry of Finance, the General Department of Customs sets specific targets. Those are, in the first year of implementation of the programme, the compliance level of businesses must be improved by at least 50% of the total of participating businesses.

In the second year, the compliance level should be improved by at least 60% of the total number of participating businesses. In the third year,the compliance level of businesses must be improved by at least 70% of the total number of participating businesses.

At the same time, businesses’ satisfactory level will reach 80% or more of the programme and the understanding, consensus and accompanying and cooperation between customs and businesses will be improved.

Businesses are excited to participate in the programme

At the conference, businesses highly appreciated this programme and expected to participate in it. They also raised many situations and questions related to participating in the programme, which were answered in detail by the representative of the Risk Management Department.

Many authorised economic operators raised questions about what incentives they enjoy in this programme. Answering the question, the Risk Management Department said the authorised economic operators themselves have enjoyed many preferential policies as prescribed, but when they participate in this programme, they will enjoy more incentives of the programme.

Some enterprises questioned that in Article 12 of Circular 81, the risk level is assessed on the import and export of goods of businesses, so how is the compliance level assessed?

The Risk Management Department said the assessment is done daily and updated at 0 o'clock. Based on information from multiple sources and updated into the system, and the system automatically processes the information to classify the compliance level of businesses into five levels.

Arepresentative of the Risk Management Department also noted that authorised economic operators are assessed atthe highest level of compliance, but sometimes they are still classified to the red channel or yellow channel due to theirgoods subject to risk management. There are no documents stipulating that authorised economic operators are exempt from inspection of 100% of import and export goods, but the customs agency conducts random inspectionsto assess the compliance. And if there are signs of violation or request for inspection under the direction of leaders, the customs agency will carry out physical inspections.

Businesses will be warned about risks to avoid errors, especially unnecessary errors when joining the programme

Benefits of businesses participating in the Programme

- Information businesses provide to the customs agency is secured.

- The customs agency provides information related to the compliance level, warns errors and violationsthat often occur in the customs clearance.

- The customs agency disseminates new regulations on customs laws and documents guiding the implementation of one regulation.

- The customs agency guides the compliance with the customs law, answers problems and recommendations related to the assessment of law compliance of businesses, thereby improving the compliance level of businesses and reducing documentary inspection, physical inspection of exported and imported goods.

- Businesses are allowed to participate in the Customs-Business partnership programme on the basis of signing memoranda of understanding between the customs agency and the business to apply trade facilitation policies.

- Businesses are allowed to participate in dialogue conferences, training programmes and support programmes to raise their compliance with the customs laws organised by the customs agency.