Provincial People’s Committee established a steering board to improve Provincial Competition Index (PCI) to timely remove obstacles and problems that local enterprises have been facing. Binh Duong Province was selected as the third locality of high PCI nationwide thanks to global integration. Talking about recent PCI of the province, Director of Binh Duong Provincial Customs, Nguyen Phuoc Viet Dung expressed his surprise.Reporter: Please tell us the role of customs in evaluation criteria of PCI?Nguyen Phuoc Viet Dung: PCI is actually based on 10 criteria watched through years. Of the criteria, 4 are directly related to customs regarding the transparency, information accessibility, unofficial fees, State’s procedure procuring fees, and enterprise supporting services. As for transparency and information accessibility, long before 2012, Binh Duong Customs has made direct dialogue with enterprises in related fields. Aside from our successful e-customs system, we could ensure registration time for 30 minutes at the most. We have installed cameras at service stalls for enterprises to monitor and check up activities of customs officers.The website of Binh Duong Customs have been expanded to Chinese and English versions frequently updated to disseminate legal documents and other practical matters.To reduce cost and burdens, currently all enterprise doing customs procedures have been offered with e-customs, digital signtures to facilitate fast and thorough declaration tasks without breaches and manipulation. We also make use of container scanners for free to reduce burdens to enterprises at the port.As for unofficial fees, Binh Duong Customs take the utmost of industrial procedures to prepare the documents timely. We have been maintaining frequent supervising teams to fix working styles of customs officers.As for enterprise supporting services, Binh Duong Customs has improved dialogue with enterprises while disseminating policies and customs procedures to timely remove obstacles and barriers hindering the enterprises in business. Professional talk-shows with association of enterprises and free training courses on digital signatures offered by Binh Duong Customs have been maintained. The advising team of Binh Duong Customs has been establish to support enterprises in informing and troubleshooting procedures the enterprises are working on.Reporter: But, how did the PCI drop dramatically?Nguyen Phuoc Viet Dung: It was sad news for all our efforts. For years, Binh Duong Province has been favored by domestic and foreign investors in the evaluations thanks to the openess and adaptation. They were thanks to group efforts not the customs. As for me, the information analysis has surprised me.The 3 localities of Binh Duong, Dong Nai, and BaRia Vung Tau in the triangle of Southern major economic zone dropped their positions in the listing while socio-economic growth maintained.It is impossible to compare Binh Duong position with some random province in the Mekong delta or Northern region for we have up to 90% of FDI enterprises and enterprises working in importing and exporting fields among the locomotive state-own enterprises. This could be considered as a recommendation for reconsidering the PCI criteria which should reflect true situation of specific locality.Binh Duong Provincial People’s Committee approved a project aiming at improving PCI which Binh Duong Customs has taken as a major task among 9 tasks procured from the beginning of the year.As the matter of fact, enterprises have returned to Binh Duong Province by 12.69% to make use of local customs with import-export revenue increased by 13.59%, and budget collection increased by 32%.The increments showed us the trust and satisfaction of enterprise community as far as investment environment in Binh Duong is concerned.Reporter: What should Binh Duong Customs do to contribute to the improvement of PCI?Nguyen Phuoc Viet Dung: Binh Duong Customs shall promote the achievements made while concentrating on researches and analysis of the results and evaluations of PCI criteria to exchange with customs of other localities in a bid to seek for new and excellent features implemented. Before hand, we should focus on internal competence of human resources and enterprise community understandings to extend our best support which is the utmost contribution to PCI improvement.Reporter: Thank you.Interviewed by Duy Chi – Translated by Vi Bao