Nguyễn Huy Tiệp, deputy director of the HCM City Customs Department. — Photo dantri.com.vn

Nguyễn Huy Tiệp, deputy director of the HCM City's Customs Department, speaks to Hải Quan (Customs) newspaper on his agency’s efforts to shorten customs clearance time.

What has the Customs Department of HCM City achieved by using trade transaction indicators?

Cross border trade transactions relate to many ministries and sectors, including customs agencies. More recently, the Department of Customs of HCM City has applied many measures to cut the time for import-export activities going through border gates.

The HCM City's Party Committee and the People’s Committee have requested the city’s customs agencies to cut 50 per cent of the time for all cargo going through border gates.

With big efforts, the city's customs forces have reduced time for customs clearance activities in all border gates as requested by the municipal authorities.

Following this success, the city's customs department has closely co-ordinated with enterprises to work out solutions to facilitate import and export activities. 

Will you please give more detail about the city's Customs Department’s plan on customs procedures in logistics and rapid flow of goods at the Cát Lái port?

This project was jointly developed by the Tân Cảng Sài Gòn Corporation (Sài gòn New Port Corporation) and the HCM City's Customs Department in early 2019. Participants in the project are prestigious and law-abiding enterprises. The customs clearance will be done by authorised customs agents. What’s more important is that when their goods have arrived at the port, they can do the customs clearance activities right on the ship at Cát lái Port after showing all required documents which were approved by authorities 15 days before.

If the goods have to be checked at the port, the goods would then be loaded on trucks and then go forwards to the checking gates. If the customs officers find something suspicious, the cargo will then have to go through regular checks.

Can you tell us some of the successes of the proposal?

Going through customs at the harbour has helped enterprises save quite a lot of money (some VNĐ700,000 or US$29.6) from loading or unloading goods, plus saving from VNĐ1-2 million from not depositing a container in storage.

What’s more important, the enterprise can be proactive in distributing goods to their customers. Adding to that, doing customs clearance in the port cuts the size of the custom office staff and let’s them focus more on checking enterprises which are likely to import high risk goods.

The city's Customs Department and the Sài Gòn Tân Cảng Corporation have made a commitment to give their best services to enterprises participating in the project. Meanwhile the Sài Gòn Tân Cảng Corporation also has made a commitment to cut from 5-10 per cent of the service cost to any client agreeing to use its services. Meanwhile the Customs Department has also made a commitment to facilitating conditions for enterprises to go through the customs checks in the shortest time possible. — VNS