HCM City Customs Department has proposed many contents to effectively implement the scheme on "Reforming the model of quality inspection and food safety inspection for imported goods" to improve State management of customs in the integration period.

Inspection of imported goods at Cat Lai port. Photo: T.H

Meet the expectations of firms

According to the leader of HCM City Customs Department, over the past time, specialised inspection has always been a difficult problem for the import-export activities of firms. Therefore, the Government and Prime Minister have given many directions to reform the specialised inspection, such as: reducing the list of goods subject to inspection, changing the inspection method from pre-inspection to post-inspection, handling overlap in specialised inspection.

The Government recently promulgated the scheme on "Reforming the model of quality and food safety inspection for imported goods" under Decision 38/QD-TTg, which is expected to fundamentally change the work of specialised inspection by the business community with seven practical reforms with specific solutions to implement.

To prepare for the implementation of specialised inspection under the reform content of the Government's Project 38 amid the Customs sector is developing a Smart Customs model, it is necessary to research some content of the work that needs to be done well so it will be convenient when deployed in reality and in the new customs model.

In terms of legal documents, when issuing the decree on specialised inspection, to meet with the needs of smart customs model, the declaration of the customs declarant will change from electronic to digital customs. To do this, it needed to be a change in current management policy. Documents attached to declarations in the form of files or using paper documents will have to be removed and replaced by digitised information on such documents, including specialised inspection documents (conformity announcement regulations, State inspection results, etc.).

This will require a change in legal policy, specifically the circular guiding on customs procedures (amended Circular 38/2015/TT-BTC) stipulating for customs declarants and data format specified in the Decree so that ministries and sectors will have to digitise information of documents related to import and export shipments subject to specialised inspection.

Thus, new arising operations on specialised inspection will completely switch to data digitisation, reducing manual operations of customs authority, helping reduce cargo clearance time and contact between customs authorities and people who go through procedures. At the same time, this will reduce the volume of data, time and costs for data conversion when building a smart customs model.

Upgrading the National Single Window

According to HCM City Customs Department, the new regulation specified that parties will interact mainly on the National Single Window System for processing specialised inspection including customs declarants, customs authorities, inspection organisations, certification organisations, state inspection agencies. Thus the system is needed to operate stably, safely and effectively.

Upgrading the National Single Window System is essential to meet the inspection procedures under the new decree on specialised inspection. Ensuring a smooth connection from the General Department of Vietnam Customs to ministries, agencies, inspection and certification organisations and firms; adding functions to meet the needs of inspection procedures according to the decree; using lists of ministries and sectors published on the National Single Window to implement information technology application and apply risk management in quality inspection and food safety inspection for import goods.

In addition, at present, besides returning results of specialised inspection on the National Single Window System, some ministries and sectors still carry out procedures via Online Public Services. Therefore, the Ministry of Finance needs to recommend ministries and sectors to unify specialised inspection procedures through the National Single Window System and the General Department of Vietnam Customs to research to standardise data so data can be connected with two systems. The National Single Window, when fully implementing specialised inspection, will be an extremely important data source not only for smart customs but also a shared database of ministries, sectors.

For coordination, HCM City Customs Department recommended when implementing the new decree on specialised inspection on the National Single Window System, relevant parties from customs declarants, customs authorities, assessment organisations, certification organisations, and State inspection agencies must monitor, update and promptly handle them. Arising cases must be exchanged for immediate resolution to avoid congestion on the system. Moreover, this is also the step for the parties to pilot the processing of digital data so when the smart customs model is deployed, it will limit errors.

In addition, ministries and sectors need to improve their responsibilities in the implementation of promulgation and publication of the List of import goods subject to quality inspection; national standards, technical regulations or safety norms applied to imported goods and published on the National Single Window Portal for units to fulfill.