Khanh Hoa province's economy has developed strongly over the past years. The robust growth of commodity trading, particularly increasing imports and exports, has placed greater efforts and challenges on the Khanh Hoa Customs Department. But, by accompanying and supporting enterprises and endeavouring to reform and modernise its operations, customs bureaus have always excellently accomplished its assigned tasks, thus contributing positively to local development.
Khanh Hoa Customs Department, established in 1983, was formerly Nghia Binh-Phu Khanh-Dak Lak-Gia Lai-Kon Tum Customs Sub-department. In the early days of its operation, it seriously lacked facilities, personnel and communication equipment for professional work. Despite the lack of personnel, it was responsible for managing a vast area with four major seaports in Phu Khanh (present-day Khanh Hoa and Phu Yen provinces) and Binh Dinh province, two overland border gates in Gia Lai and Dak Lak provinces, with the assigned tasks of controlling and preventing smuggling, inspecting commodities, calculating and collecting taxes and fees, and escorting commodities.
In 1990, the Customs Ordinance was issued and Phu Khanh Customs Sub-department was renamed to Khanh Hoa Customs Department. Mr Tran Hai Son, Director of Khanh Hoa Customs Department, said that, in the context of increasing foreign economic relations, foreign trade activities and foreign direct investment into Vietnam, Khanh Hoa Customs Department consolidated its apparatus, strengthened human resources training, gradually modernised its operations to meet State customs management requirements in the new context. “Now, Khanh Hoa Customs Department, staffed by 151 well-trained employees, with many holding master’s degrees, can fulfil all customs requirements,” he said.
Like the rest of the country, Khanh Hoa Customs Department effectively reformed and modernised customs operations to further facilitate trade and investment attraction, and received good appreciation from all-tiers of government and the business community. The department synchronously carried out many positive measures to complete and exceed its yearly targets of collecting budget revenues, combating smuggling and trade fraud, and ensuring national security sovereignty. With the support of the General Department of Vietnam Customs and the Khanh Hoa Provincial People’s Committee and the effort of all the staff, the department always fulfilled its duties. In 2014, it collected over VND7,000 billion for the State Budget, nearly 40 per cent higher than the assigned target. It fetched over VND3,600 billion in 2015 and over VND5,800 billion in 2016.
One of outstanding works performed by Khanh Hoa Customs Department in the past years was reforming administrative procedures and building customs-business relationship. The year 2016 marked a strong transformation. Administrative procedure reform and customs modernisation were given much importance by Khanh Hoa Customs Department as it eyed to build a simplified, transparent, public, convenient and unified customs system to maximally facilitate export and import operations of enterprises.
Synchronous and comprehensive administrative reform, modernisation and renovation in all aspects contributed positively to its overall success in the year. The department saw a considerable increase in exports and imports and more companies using electronic customs procedures in 2016. Specifically, 173 companies declared 27,669 sets of declaration forms with a total trade value of more than US$4 million.
To ensure favourable conditions for enterprises while still ensuring customs management, Khanh Hoa Customs Department detailed customs modernisation development contents, plans and programmes with the aim of ensuring legal compliance, reducing procedures and shortening clearance time. The department successfully operated the VNACCS/VCIS automated goods clearance system at all affiliated customs bureaus, ensured favourable and transparent customs declaration and clearance in the process. The agency managed to reduce the clearance time to 1-3 seconds for green-labelled declaration forms, to less than one hour for exported goods and less than 35 hours for imported goods.
Khanh Hoa Customs Department has also applied the National Single Window (NSW), online public services with business support measures to settling difficulties and problems arising from production and business activities. At the same time, the department has strengthened customs and business relations development by signing more agreements to further facilitate the business community and improve its management capacity towards transparency and efficiency.
Mr Tran Hai Son said, along with customs reform and modernisation, Khanh Hoa Customs Department will continue to consolidate its organisation according to the roadmap of the General Department of Vietnam Customs to fulfil its tasks set for the new period and contribute positively to the socioeconomic development of the country in general and the province in particular.
Giang Vy
Vietnamese
October 2024
Hanoi