Binh Duong Customs – the flagship of Vietnamese Customs

Such was evaluation of Mr. Nguyen Duong Thai, Deputy General Commissioner of Vietanm Customs at the recent meeting to sum up professional activities in 2014 with planning for 2015 of Binh Duong Provincial Customs.

Information Technology (IT) – the key to success

VNACCS/VCIS was remarkably applied in 2014 to mark the strong and outstanding development of IT application to meet the demand for modernization of the customs. Accordingly, IT application measures have been followed including VNACCS/VCIS to assure thorough operations and easier conditions for enterprises. Coordination has been timely made with general department of customs to remove the emerged obstacles assuring safe and thorough 24/7 operations. In the year, Binh Duong Customs has handled procedures for 4,109 enterprises which are 8.67% higher than in 2013. Budget collection gained VND 9,836 billion or 107.49% of the planned efforts assigned by the general department and 109.28% of provincial people’s committee assignment and 19.22% higher than 2013. Container scanners have worked on 9,612 containers and 6,448 declarations.

Practical measures

To ensure good operation and practice of VNACS/VCIS, Binh Duong Customs established 3 groups of implementing administrative reforms including group of measuring clearance duration, cargo release, and importation, group of 2-stage VNACCS/VCIS to remove obstacles of the system, and group of customs manual for specific types of cargoes. The 3 groups are to resolve clearance time for cargoes of exporting enterprises in the province under Prime Minister’s Directive.

Container scanner saves up a lot of time and costs for enterprises in the process of goods exportation. Photo: D. Chi.

For the group of administrative procedure reforms, measures necessary for enterprise community have been robustly taken care of to support enterprise community in customs procedures. Particularly, the department issued a handbook of customs profession to offer detail guidance for documents and instruments in customs profile for each type of exporting goods and policies for enterprises to research on and carry out their work.

To actively support the enterprises

Binh Duong Customs has identified that the customs clearance is accounted for the very small part of total procedure burden. Particularly, clearance time for an importing cargo lot is 30 minutes at the fastest and 1 hours 45 minutes at the latest for red lined, 1 minute per cargo row at the fastest and 1 hours 15 minutes for yellow lined, and 3 seconds for green lined. Procedure burden at related functional agencies is 95 hours 50 minutes (equivalent to 4 days) and portal switching time is 50 hours 13 minutes (equivalent to 2 days). Thus, a cargo lot must bear maximum 7 days or 168 hours to be cleared. Such comparison puts procedure burden at Binh Duong Customs at the lowest time consumption.

Such achievements have been appreciated by Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese Enterprise Associations for support and mutual understanding.

Addressing the conclusion meeting, Mr. Tran Van Nam, permanent Deputy Chair of Binh Duong Provincial People’s Committee informed that in 2014 the challenging economic status in the world has prompted Binh Duong Customs to innovate for better service and support. Appreciating the achievements made, State President awarded Third Rank Labor Decoration to 3 collectives and 11 individuals for their brilliant achievements in constructing and protecting the nation. The Prime Minister awarded merit certificates to 1 collectives and 4 individuals for the excellence in assignments.

Reported by Duy Chi – Translated by Vi Bao