Building a digital and smart customs system is an important step to facilitate the business community, improve the efficiency of State management of customs, and soon bring Vietnam Customs on par with developed countries.

Official of Van Don Airport Customs Group (Cam Pha port Customs Branch - Quang Ninh|
Customs Department) supervises luggage through scanning machine and camera.
Photo: Quang Hùng

Urgently complete professional problems

The key task of the whole sector in the current period is to gather resources to soon complete work related to building a digital and smart customs system.

The General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDVC) issued Document 3435/TCHQ-VP dated July 8, 2021 on assigning to review and complete professional requirements for building a smart customs system for various departments of GDVC and local customs departments.

The GDVC decided to set up six groups of customs officials to work with foreign experts under the TFP project related to building a smart customs system.

In addition, the GDVC also assigned tasks to units (document providers, host units, coordination units) in developing professional problems (nine groups) for building the system. The fields that have many professional problems are related to customs management supervision, risk management, etc.

The leaders of GDVC requested the Customs Control and Supervision Department, the Anti-smuggling and Investigation Department, the Import-Export Duty Department and the Post-Clearance Audit Department, Risk Management Department, Customs IT and Statistics Department, Customs Department of Goods Verification, Inspectorate Department, Legal Department and Board of Modernisation Reform each appoint one departmental leader and official to participate in relevant review groups. Particularly, Board of Modernisation Reform must appoint customs officials to join all groups.

For units assigned to review and complete requirements of business problems, appoint one leader of the department in charge general content and specialised official to participate in review groups to complete requirements of business problems as assigned to each problem and field.

According to Customs News, after receiving the direction of GDVC, the departments of the GDVC, especially local customs departments, have urgently implemented the tasks.

As one of the units assigned to develop many solutions for professional problems, Hai Phong Customs Department took the initiative to allocate resources and develop detailed implementation plans.

On July 25, talking to reporters, Deputy Director of Hai Phong Customs Department Nguyen Kien Giang said under the direction of GDVC in Official Dispatch 3435, the Department was assigned to lead for developing 12 professional problems (in the field of customs supervision and import and export duty) and participate in coordination regarding all other professional fields.

Hai Phong Customs Department assigns specific groups to work with local customs departments assigned to lead for fields of cooperation. At the same time, the units are required to study documents for effective coordination.

“For professional units under the department, the department's leaders required specific research on in-depth areas such as post-clearance audit, risk management, inspection, and anti-smuggling while the branches had task of studying all documents on business problems. Hai Phong Customs Department was determined to ensure the implementation of the work contents following the schedule set by the leaders of GDVC,” Nguyen Kien Giang said.

Efforts to complete the task of hiring IT services

On January 26, the Minister of Finance signed Decision 97/QD-BTC approving the policy of hiring information technology (IT) services to implement Digital Customs, in which decentralised to the Director General of Vietnam Customs to approve the plan on hiring IT services to perform digital customs, organised bidding, selected contractors and signs contracts to hire IT services.

Along with building solutions to professional problems, the implementation of Decision 97/QD-BTC plays a very important role in building Digital Customs and Smart Customs. The leader of the Customs IT and Statistics Department said with the attention and drastic direction of the leaders of GDVC, the Steering Committee for hiring IT services to implement Digital Customs, Teams, Working Groups, and units under the GDVC had made great efforts, worked with a high sense of responsibility and completed a lot of work. That was, completing requirements of the business problem; fulfilling technical and technological requirements; completing construction of cost estimates; completing the draft document for approval of the information security level for the system and completing the draft plan on hiring IT services.