To automate inspection and supervision, the General Department of Customs has equipped local Customs units with positioning seals and container scanners. The use of these tools by the Southern Customs unit has been effective, but has not reached maximum capacity.

Customs branch outside the industrial park (Binh Duong Customs Department)
inspects goods with container scanners.

Use of positioning seal not significant

Reporting the use of positioning seal of the Southern Customs units, Director of Customs Control and Supervision Department Au Anh Tuan said the General Department of Customs has equipped and put into use 2,000 positioning seals nationwide. However, only 1,171 seals have been used so far. This shows the use of positioning seals is still insignificant and ineffective.

“A positioning seal can be rotated seven times a month. Thus, with 2,000 units can be used 14,000 times, but in fact from August to December, there were 5,113 using times of positioning seals, less than 10% of capacity. The General Department of Customs has issued a series of documents requiring units to increase the use of seals. When positioning seals are used up, the normal seals will be used,” Tuan said.

Some Customs units have also introduced solutions and recommendations to use positioning seals effectively.

Director of Dong Nai Customs Department Phung Thi Bich Huong said the new positioning seals were deployed by the General Department of Customs since mid-July, but the use of positioning seals was still limited due to unfamiliarity. But in recent months, the department has used new positioning seals stably, with priority given to some types of independent transportation. In the coming months, Dong Nai Customs Department will completely use positioning seals to bring maximum efficiency for the management of independently transported goods.

Deputy Director of HCM City Customs Department Nguyen Huu Nghiep said that the Customs Department of HCM City was equipped with 300 positioning seals. Since July 17, the department has attached 562 times of electronic positioning seals to monitor goods on leaving under customs supervision and received 616 containers with positioning seals from customs branches under other customs departments. To use positioning seals more effectively, HCM City Customs Department said currently, only 14 Customs departments have launched the positioning seal, so many shipments need to be sealed but if customs units of the destination has not implemented the positioning seal, the sealing is impossible, leading to ineffective use of positioning seals.

When it rains, the front part of the seal that contacts the magnetic card gets wet (even with dry cleaning), so the unlocking of the positioning seal is difficult. Meanwhile, when container trucks have to be parked in a parking lot, customs officers have to perform outdoor operations, so it takes 1-2 hours to unlock the seal.

Regarding technical errors of the positioning seal as reflected above, Director General Nguyen Van Can asked to review this and make written confirmation for errors to ask the providers for reimbursement. The Director General said the Ministry of Finance has agreed to the customs sector buying 5,000 more electronic seals. With this quantity of seals, all independently transported goods must have positioning seals to leave the port. "In the short term, for 2,000 seals that have been equipped, the customs units must use them effectively, avoiding less use as the current date,” the Director General said.

For independently transported goods, the General Department of Customs has strengthened management from HCM City seaports to provincial border gates and has detected violations, so the General Department of Customs has asked the customs units to strengthen the supervision and management of independently transported goods to ensure management regulations of the customs agency, especially at the end of the year when the volume of goods increases.

Increasing the screening rate through scanners

In the south, there are three Customs units equipped with container scanners, including: HCM City Customs Department with five machines (one fixed machine has a software error and is not working), Binh Duong Customs Department with two machines and Dong Nai Customs Department with one machine.

According to Tuan, the maximum capacity of a scanner can screen 120 containers per hour. With such a capacity, if using the lowest capacity of about 50 containers per hour, the number of containers screened per day is also very remarkable. However, the container screening at Customs units equipped with scanners is still very low, the total number of containers screened per day is not equal to the screening rate within 1-2 hours with the lowest screening capacity.

As one of the units assessed by the General Department of Customs to have a higher screening rate than others, the director of Binh Duong Customs Department Nguyen Phuoc Viet Dung said the department was equipped with two scanners, due to the management characteristics in the area, the screened goods are mainly of foreign-invested enterprises, with about 70 containers per day, the deployment of goods screening through container scanners at Binh Duong Customs Department has facilitated import and export activities and maintained growth momentum, attracting many enterprises to carry out customs procedures, contributing to raising budget revenue.

At the HCM City Customs Department, to use scanners effectively, under the direction of the General Department of Customs, the unit will move the scanner at ICD Phuoc Long to Cat Lai port, because Cat Lai is the ICD port with the largest volume of goods.

Director General Nguyen Van Can emphasised that all screening serves were for the control and management of the Customs agency, so it is necessary to increase the screening rate and perform effective minimum screening capacity of 50 containers per one hour. If the system has not selected automatically, manual selection will be applied, all selected shipments will be publicly announced on the website of the customs sector. Currently, the General Department of Customs is ordering 12 scanners and they will arrive in Vietnam in June next year to equip customs units.

The synchronous deployment of modern management tools and equipment is a requirement to achieve automated management, said the Director General.