Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance (MOF) has successfully carried out comprehensive reforms in taxation and customs administration whose benefits are now slowly manifesting, according to a top government official.
Deputy Minister Tran Van Hieu in a recent speech said the MOF has been able to implement Resolution No. 19/NQ-CP that covers tax and customs reforms, the MOF focusing particularly on increasing automation and passing policies and laws in support of improved taxation and customs procedures.
In the Customs agency, management procedures have been elevated from manual to full automation with the application of the Vietnam Automated Cargo Customs and National Single Window, said a release by Vietnam Customs. The applications have been deployed in all 34 Customs departments and all 171 Customs sub-departments nationwide, it said.
Vietnam Automated Cargo Customs has facilitated Vietnam’s trade activity, as 99.65% of export declarations are now coursed through the platform. In the first year of implementation (from January 4, 2014 to March 31, 2015), about 56,000 companies sent 6.74 million declarations with an approximate value of US$271.5 million via the system.
“Import and export taxpaying is now implemented automatically through exchanging information on tax amounts between Customs and commercial banks,” enabling enterprises to pay taxes anytime, anywhere and de-congesting the port gates, said Vietnam Customs.
Customs has also stepped up deployment of the National Single Window and Association of Southeast Asian Nations Single Window. At present, General Departments of Customs has connected with nine other ministries and sectors, and has technically connected with the ASEAN Single Window.
These reforms and enhanced automation have favored enterprises in the area of customs declaration, helping save time in processing documents for moving import and export goods across borders. The report said “the time for customs clearance on average [has decreased] from 21 days to 14 days for export and to 13 days for import.” This has led to a reduction in import-export costs of 10% to 20% and savings in time consumed of 30% for import-export customs clearance.
In taxation, more than 510,000 firms, or 98% of the total, use electronic tax declaration, and nearly 25 million tax declaration files have been received and processed online. The number of hours for tax compliance has been reduced from 537 hours per year to 167 hours per year, or a pruning away of some 370 hours.
Photo courtesy of ASEAN.org
