Vietnam Customs reduces container checks

The Vietnamese Ministry of Finance has asked all customs departments to reduce checks on export and import containers at ports nationwide to help companies cut cost and time for customs clearance, the Saigon Times Daily reported.

Deputy Minister of Finance Do Hoang Anh Tuan said that the Government had asked for streamlined customs clearance procedures.

The customs is working toward reducing the ratio of container checks at ports to 15 percent by year-end from the 2008 level of 23 percent and 17 percent last year, Tuan said.

Tuan said there was no reason to check many containers as few violations had been found and checked containers in some regional countries accounted for only 12 percent of total throughput.

He explained that after a recent fact-finding trip to some major Ho Chi Minh City ports which have the highest ratios of checked containers, the number of containers found to infringe Customs regulations was small.

At Cat Lai Port where some 45 percent of the nation’s import and export containers are put through, the problematic containers make up less than 0.3 percent of those checked.

Tuan said the current time-consuming customs procedures under which containers are manually inspected had made life difficult for enterprises.

To quicken customs clearance, Cat Lai Port earlier this month installed a container scanning system worth US$9.6 million. The scanner is able to check around 100 containers a day while Cat Lai’s total daily container throughput is 4,000.

Tuan said that Customs had nearly 240 procedures which they are trying to reduce by 30 percent this year.
 
(Source: Cargo News Asia)