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| Deputy Director of Lang Son Customs Department Vu Tuan Binh |
What are your assessment of the smuggling and illegal transportation of goods across the border in Lang Son province in recent years?
– Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic (in 2020), in Lang, Son province, import-export and immigration activities only remained at five border gates; sometimes, there were only 2-4 border gates, or only a railway line was active. The management authorities have implemented many solutions to facilitate businesses to create favorable conditions in cargo clearance and goods delivery. Unfortunately, taking advantage of this creation, many subjects have committed violations by using many sophisticated methods and tricks on a large scale.
Subjects and businesses often use sophisticated and unpredictable methods and tricks, focusing on many behaviors such as: failing to declare, making incorrect declarations compared to the actual goods; hiding the origin and route of the shipment; importing goods that do not meet the conditions of standards and regulations. In particular, many smugglers use methods, tricks, and hooks with businesses importing goods to take advantage of the risk management mechanism in customs clearance to commit violations to evade taxes.
In addition, the objects and enterprises also sophisticatedly hide infringing goods mixed with non-infringing goods to evade the control of domestic and foreign authorities, taking advantage of forms of temporary import and re-export, transporting goods for smuggling, illegally transporting goods across borders… taking advantage of e-commerce activities, express delivery to trade in banned and contraband goods, goods of unknown origin, goods infringing intellectual property rights…
China has opened up, and the risk of smuggling, trade fraud, counterfeit goods and illegal transportation of goods at the Lang Son border will increase. What do you think about this forecast?
In 2023, when China loosened measures to prevent the Covid-19 pandemic and resumed clearance of import and export goods at border gates, the competent Chinese forces withdrew deeply into inland… has led to increased smuggling, trade fraud, and illegal transportation of goods. In particular, the illegal transport of goods across borders in some border areas still occurs.
When clearance activities at border gates with China are reopened, smuggling, trade fraud, and counterfeit goods continue to be more complicated and sophisticated due to the impact of mechanisms and policies on goods circulation in international economic integration. Along with that, the situation of trading in poor quality goods, counterfeit goods and goods infringing IPR in the domestic market will also increase.
So what solutions and plans have Lang Son Customs made to prevent and control the above situation, sir?
To proactively prevent this, Lang Son Customs directs its units to regularly collect information about enterprises, subjects and import-export goods in which, focusing on the group of products with a high risk of fraud in value, tax rates, goods subject to import and export conditions, goods registered for intellectual property rights, reviewing information about high-risk enterprises, besides that, strengthening online duty and container screening for suspicious shipments.
In particular, the unit actively collects, analyzes and processes information and conducts inspection by sampling method or inspecting when there are signs of violation for enterprises and import-export goods passing through the area and, in particular, focusing on checking for items with taxable value, high tax rate, sensitive items, and suspicious shipments which are channelized to the green channel. In addition, the uni has carried out a post-clearance audit for imported goods such as electronic equipment, automobile components, electronic components, and consumer groceries and has detected mistakes and fraudulent tricks of some enterprises.
To do this, Lang Son Customs requested units to strengthen the review of trademarks upon receipt to inspect customs dossiers declared on the software; strengthen inspection, supervision and strict control of imported goods, especially goods with high tax rates. At the same time, stepping up inspection and supervision of re-imported vehicles and containers, strengthening the collection and analysis of information about enterprises, especially those that have committed violations of making an incorrect declaration of imported goods.
Along with that, strengthening customs supervision at inspection sites and goods gathering places; supervising goods warehouses to destroy gathering points of smuggled goods right in the border gate areas; continuing to promote online supervision through the monitoring system from the warehouse area of the Vietnamese side and the Chinese side; strengthening supervision of goods through the border gate, especially imported goods through the automated container screening system at the border gate to closely supervise the source of imported goods into Vietnam based on the type of goods that enterprises have declared.
Besides strengthening the implementation and synchronous application of customs professional control measures; closely inspecting and supervising import and export goods; strict control of trails, and key points at risk of smuggling and illegal transport of goods across the border, Lang Son Customs will also increase the use of container scanning machine and equipment to timely “unmasking” tricks and acts of abuse to hide and transport banned goods, counterfeit goods, goods infringing intellectual property rights, trade fraud in import-export activities.
In addition, Lang Son Customs will implement plans for specialized inspection, internal inspection, and public service inspection; continue to review and inspect records, processes and procedures, and promptly correct errors.
Thank you!