Speaking at the workshop, Deputy Director General of the General Department of Customs Au Anh Tuan said that implementing the Customs Development Strategy to 2030 approved by the Prime Minister, the General Department of Customs has closely followed strategic goals such as: building Vietnam Customs to be a leader in implementing Digital Government, with the model of Digital Customs, Smart Customs, towards a paperless environment in state management of customs through promoting digital signatures, connecting, integrating, and sharing digital data with the Ministry of Finance's Command and Operation System and the Government Reporting Information System.

Deputy Director General Au Anh Tuan and representatives of professional units directly recorded and responded to proposals from the business community. Photo: H.Nu

In particular, aiming to convert 100% of basic customs control records into electronic data, moving towards digitization, the General Department of Customs is the unit in charge of drafting the Decree amending and supplementing Decree 08/2015/ND-CP and Circular amending and supplementing Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC, continuing to review, research and supplement new contents, as well as revise some contents that have been amended and supplemented in the draft for which comments have been collected.

To ensure that the provisions of the law are consistent and unified, the General Department of Customs has developed and collected comments from relevant units on the draft Decree and Circular. After collecting comments, in order for the draft Decree and Circular to be complete, strict and suitable to reality, with high feasibility, the General Department of Customs organized to directly collect comments on the draft Decree and Circular, Deputy General Director Au Anh Tuan added.

Accordingly, at this workshop, local customs units and the business community participated in contributing opinions and proposing contents related to ensuring and meeting Digital Customs, Smart Customs, the goal is to build regulations on the principle of ensuring the implementation of customs procedures in the electronic environment, intelligent data processing through the digitization of documents in the customs dossier; declaration, reception and processing of customs dossiers are carried out through the system.

At the same time, to ensure that customs management of processing and production activities for export is carried out on the system; The management of priority enterprises' activities is carried out through the connection and exchange of data between enterprises and customs agencies, etc.

Specifically, some contents related to the group of customs procedures, customs supervision of import and export goods, enterprises are interested and have raised many opinions, suggestions to amend and supplement related contents on the location of customs procedures (Article 4); customs declarants (Article 5); subjects required to carry out customs procedures, subject to customs inspection and supervision (Article 6); application of priority enterprise regime (Article 10); additional declaration of import and export goods (Article 20); customs declaration (Article 25);

Actual inspection of goods (Article 29); release of goods (Article 32); responsibilities and coordination of competent state agencies at border gates in the inspection of goods and means of transport at border gates (Article 33); customs supervision of import and export goods, transit goods (Article 34); customs procedures for re-imported goods (Article 47); norms for processing imported and exported goods (Article 55), etc.

Giving opinions at the workshop, most representatives of the Associations: VASEP, Textile, VAMA, Logistics..., and enterprises all acknowledged the positive actions of the Customs agency in building legal policies to create favorable conditions for the business community and ensure strict and effective state management of customs.

Business representatives gave their opinions to complete the draft Decree amending and supplementing Decree 08/2015/ND-CP and Circular amending and supplementing Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC. Photo: H.Nu

However, in addition to reforming administrative procedures, associations and enterprises proposed that the Customs and specialized management agencies create more favorable conditions for inspection of goods requiring specialized inspection licenses; goods stored in bonded warehouses allowing enterprises to declare once; customs risk management for priority enterprises; review regulations on destroying goods that do not meet regulations, etc.

In addition, enterprises proposed that there be specific instructions on pre-determining codes, analyzing classifications, and appraising goods; researching and developing regulations for customs agents to develop in accordance with the set goals, etc.

Representatives of associations and enterprises also said that in the recent period, the Customs sector has taken very long steps in reforming administrative procedures. The Draft Decree amending and supplementing Decree 08/2015/ND-CP and the Circular amending and supplementing Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC are important documents for enterprises in carrying out customs procedures, especially directly affecting customs clearance procedures for enterprises. The draft has many new points. If enterprises give specific and practical comments, it will be very favorable when the policy comes into effect.

Concluding the workshop, Deputy Director General Au Anh Tuan said that the goal of policy development, in addition to resolving difficulties, the Drafting Committee (General Department of Customs) aims to create more favorable conditions for import and export activities. Whether customs procedures are favorable, transparent, and of good quality depends largely on the quality of legal documents.

The participation of enterprises themselves in contributing opinions to policy development is a very important step for the policy to be effective in practice. Therefore, through this workshop, the Drafting Committee highly appreciates the contributions of business associations and the business community in the process of building and perfecting the above draft documents, Deputy General Director Au Anh Tuan emphasized.