The General Department of Customs is taking many measures to facilitate speedy customs clearance of goods for health examination and treatment, especially amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Illustrative photo: Source: Internet

The General Department of Customs recently responded to the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi on solutions to clear imported medicine shipments. Through investigation and inspection of importation of medicines or medicinal materials, the customs agency identified suspicious signs of some importers using illegal documents to bring medicines and medicinal materials to Vietnam.

The General Department of Customs is conducting inspections including inspecting original documents that enterprises have submitted to the customs agency to ensure the origin, quality, standards and legality of medicines and medicinal materials entering Vietnam in accordance with Law on Pharmacy 2016, Decree 54/2017 dated May 8, 2017 of the Government and other legal documents to prevent fake goods, poor-quality goods, goods infringing intellectual property right that harm people’s health.

In addition, the General Department of Customs requested local customs departments to follow several solutions such as:

Accepting certificate of analytical results of medicine and medicinal materials with the digital signature of the manufacturer for customs clearance.

Allowing the importer to take goods required for special storage conditions (such as medicine, vaccine, biological materials) storage places and conducting physical inspection of those goods at their storages at the importer’s request.

Based on the channel classification results on the e-customs data system to conduct inspection for shipments of which customs declarations were opened before August 1.

For yellow channel declarations, the customs agency shall conduct documentary check, if there are no violations, the goods will be cleared immediately and if not, the goods shall be classified into the red channel for physical inspection.

For red channel declarations, customs shall inspect goods and check it with information declared on the customs declaration and customs dossiers and request customs declaration to present the original copies of power of attorney, product circulation permit, certificate of analytical results to check with submitted copies.

The General Department of Customs said from comments of enterprises, the General Department will guide local customs department to remove difficulties for firms in a timely fashion, to accelerate customs clearance for eligible imported shipments, especially medicine shipments imported at Tan Son Nhat airport, Cat Lai seaport, HCM City.