On December 17, in HCM City, Director General of the General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDVC) Nguyen Van Can presided over a meeting with eight customs departments in the South on customs inspection and supervision and State revenue collection.

Director General Nguyen Van Can spoke at the meeting with
customs departments in the South in December. Photo: T.H

Drastically perform revenue collection

The meeting was attended by Deputy Director General of GDVC Mai Xuan Thanh, representatives of some GDVC departments, leaders of customs departments of HCM City, Dong Nai, Binh Duong, Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Long An, Tay Ninh, Binh Phuoc and An Giang.

For the State revenue collection in 2020, Director General said that the Customs sector’s estimated revenue is VND338,000 billion.However it is difficult to achieve this target. At the recent meeting of the Ministry of Finance, the ministry’s leaders assigned the GDVC to collect at least VND312,000 billion, and the desired target must exceed this figure.

To achieve the above results, the customs departments should make great efforts. Particularly for eight customs departments with large revenues in the South, the departments should estimate and close the revenues until December 31, 2020 to provide solutions for performance from now to the end of the year.

According to the representative of the Import-Export Duty Department, as of December 15, the entire Customs sector’s revenue was VND298,056 billion, reaching 88.2% of the estimate in 2020.

Following the direction of the GDVC’s leaders, in addition to drastically taking measures for revenue collection, local customs department need to pay attention to collectingoutstanding tax debts. In particular, fully and drastically implement solutions to collect each tax debt group. Currently, the tax debts in eightSouthern customs departments is classified into two groups, of which, there are four customs departments with tax debt of VND1 billion or more; the remaining four departments with tax debts from several million to several hundred millionVND.

At the meeting, the customs departments with large revenues in the South reported many solutions for revenue collection and closing therevenue to December 12.

According to these departments, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic had a serious impact on all socio-economic fields in the world and pushed the global economy into the recession which greatly affected the customs departments’ revenue. Most of the departments do not achieve the target in 2020.

HCM City, which has the large revenue of VND115 billion, accounting for more than one third of the revenue of the entire customs sector, is significantly affected. Import turnover of consumer goods also fell sharply, especially import turnover of cars with less than 9 seats, fuel, iron, steel, alcohol, beer, consumer goods for domestic and foreign tourists, making the department revenue decrease by more than VND14,000 billion.

As of December 15, HCM City Customs Department collected VND100,090 billion, reaching 87.0% of the estimate and reducing by 12.4% year-on-year. HCM City Customs has made great efforts in the last weeks of the year to achieve the highest results. The department estimates that by December 31, 2020, the revenue will achieve over VND106,000 billion, reaching 92.2% of the ordinance estimate.

For the State revenue collection, Director General Nguyen Van Can said that the customs departments provided solutions for revenue collection and estimated the revenues by the end of the year. The Director General requested the Southern customs departments to make efforts to promptly and sufficiently collect revenue. Departments should be not subjective and follow directions and apply measures to combat revenue loss to achieve the highest revenue.

Increasing use of positioning seal

At the meeting, the departments focused on discussing many contents related to the screening of containers, the use of positioning sealsat the Southern customs departments. According to the Customs Control and Supervision Department, departments have equipped container scanners but have not made use of the minimum capacity, the use of positioningseals has been limited, and many independent shipping declarations on the system have not been processed.

Director General Nguyen Van Can requested the HCM City Customs Department and local customs departments to completely liquidate the existing independent shipping declarations, especially the Cat Lai port area. During the liquidation, arising problems should be solved immediately, if the system cannot solve them, manual method will be applied. Relevant units must finish liquidation by December 31.

For the screening work, the Director General asked the Customs Control and Supervision Department and HCM City Customs Department to work directly with Saigon Newport Corporation on the location of the scanner to serve the customs screening in the most convenient manner.

Regarding the use of the positioningseal, the Director General said that the Ministry of Finance agreed with the customs sector on buying 5,000 more seals. With this amount, all independently transported goods must have the positioning seal, if goods do not have the positioning seal, they will not allowed out of the port. "In the short term, for 2,000 seals that have been equipped, the departments must use them up, avoid less use as the current date,” the Director General said.

For independently transported goods, the GDVC has issued many documents on warnings about smuggling, including transit goods and business goods, and the departments need to strictly comply with directions by the GDVC’s leaders.