Guarantee for customs clearance to be piloted in 2021-22

Mai Xuan Thanh, Deputy Director of the General Department of Customs, said the project was in its draft stage.

The implementation of guarantee for customs clearance would be divided into three phases: pilot implementation in 2021-22, expansion in 2022-23 and official implementation from 2024, Thanh said.

Guarantee for customs clearance was a form of financial commitment that customs authorities asked from import and export companies to ensure that they would fully implement their tax and fee obligations as well as comply with customs procedures when they wished to clear customs before completing all customs procedures as prescribed.

Thanh said guarantee for customs clearance was being applied in a number of countries, adding that this would help enhance trade facilitation through speeding up clearance.

This mechanism would also help firms to reduce costs from storage as well as have greater business opportunities as their goods would be put into circulation or production earlier.

Under the draft, the guarantee would be provided by insurance companies.

Firms would not necessarily have to have mortgage assets to get the guarantee, Thanh said, adding that insurance companies would look at the evaluation of the companies’ operation and financial capacity, instead of mortgaged assets, to provide the guarantee.

“The mechanism of guarantee for customs clearance will bring more business opportunities for firms,” he said.

The value could be based on the sum of tax firms must pay or the value of the import/export batch of goods.

Thanh citied estimates of the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation that guarantees customs clearance would help lower administrative procedure cost by 0.1-0.5 per cent and customs clearance cost by 0.5-0.8 per cent while it would increase export by around 1 per cent.

The draft project was scheduled to be submitted to the National Assembly for approval next year.

Customs budget revenue up 21 per cent

Updates from the General Department of Customs revealed that budget reached more than VND83 trillion (US$3.5 billion) in the first quarter of this year, representing a rise of 21 per cent over the same period last year.

The customs authority said the significant rise in revenue in the first quarter was due to the rise in import-export value which was up 6.8 per cent to reach $116.5 billion in the quarter.

Especially, tax collection from the imports of automobiles and crude oil helped boost budget revenue.

About 38,900 cars were imported into the country in the quarter, worth $848 million, up 864 per cent in volume and 646 per cent in valuer. Tax collection from car import totaled more than VND11.5 trillion, up 886 per cent.

Crude oil import totaled more than 2 million tonnes, up 2,347 per cent. Tax revenue from crude oil import reach VND2.07 trillion, 20 times higher than the same period last year.