USAID reviews facilitation work at Bac Ninh Customs

The meeting

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At the meeting, the TFP’s representative said that the TFP’s activities are to support the General Department of Customs and Vietnam’s competent state agencies to apply and approach modern management methods based on the application of information technology and risk management to facilitate cross-border trade and realize Vietnam’s international commitments.

Vietnam joined the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (WTO TFA Agreement) on December 15, 2015. The agreement entered into force on February 22, 2017. The TFP supports the General Department of Customs in assessing the implementation of Article 8.1 of the WTO TFA.

This aims to assess the level and effectiveness of cooperation activities between the competent national border authorities, point out gaps and inadequacies, and recommend measures to create substantive trade facilitation as required by Article 8.1 of the WTO TFA Agreement.

At the meeting, TFP’s exports raised many questions related to the coordination between Bac Ninh Customs and competent authorities in performing the task of state management of customs; coordination in performing trade facilitation tasks, especially management of goods subject to the specialized inspection list; performance of administrative procedures through the National Single Window, the ASEAN Single Window; and noted the recommendations and proposals of the Customs in further promoting trade facilitation.

Ranked No. 1 in terms of turnover

A representative of Bac Ninh Customs Department said that from the beginning of 2022, there are 5,615 enterprises carrying out import and export procedures through the area, especially big companies of multinational corporations such as Samsung, Canon, Amkor, Goertek, Foxconn, and Luxshare.

The main types of import and export include non-taxable goods of export processing enterprises; tax exemption (import of raw materials and supplies for export processing and production, export of processed products) and some types of taxable import (import of machinery and equipment; imports for production business; imports for consumption business).

From the beginning of the year to November 16, Bac Ninh Customs recorded US$159.2 billion in trade (up 10% year-on-year) and continued to maintain the leading position among customs units nationwide.

Accordingly, on November 16, the department collected VND 11,223 billion (up 3.5% of the 2022 target assigned by the Ministry of Finance).

Bac Ninh Customs Department manages 29 industrial parks, with a total area of ​​about 10,600 hectares in Bac Ninh, Bac Giang and Thai Nguyen provinces.

“It is forecasted that the number of enterprises will increase rapidly, so the volume of imported and exported goods will also increase, putting requirements and pressure on management for the Customs, which not only ensures management following the law but also facilitate international trade activities”, a leader of the Operations Division (Bac Ninh Customs Department) said.

To well perform the task of state management of customs, especially to create favourable conditions for the business community in import and export activities, and to attract investment, in addition to efforts to speed up the customs administrative reform and modernization, Bac Ninh Customs Department has always paid attention and focus on coordination with authorities in the area.

In November, the department signed a regulation on coordination with the Management Boards of Industrial Parks in three provinces: Bac Ninh, Bac Giang and Thai Nguyen. Through the signed regulation, two parties exchanged business information and statistics on tax collection and payment, export and import turnover of enterprises in the industrial parks.

Deputy Minister Vu Thi Mai: Ministry of Finance strives to deploy trade facilitation project together with USAID

At the meeting, representatives of the Bac Ninh Customs Department and the Industrial Parks Management Board of Bac Ninh province provided detailed information and answered questions that the TFP experts were interested in.