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City pulls plug on electronic customs
The HCM City Customs Department will stop the use of e-clearance from the third quarter and revert to clearing goods manually following constant glitches in the system, according to officials.
But many companies that were using e-clearance since its introduction four years ago are not amused and called it a retrograde step.
Nguyen Trong Hung, deputy director of the department, said earlier this week that e-customs clearance had not been synchronised with other processes and the software to run it was not sophisticated and did not ensure smooth clearance.
Application forms had not been standardised, making processing a difficult task, he said.
"The customs staff don’t really want to work on e-clearance while enterprises have not been very eager [either]," Hung said.
But Nguyen Tai Trung, deputy director of the HCM City-based Ben Thanh Tobacco Company, had a different opinion, saying "e-customs clearance has benefited enterprises greatly with export and import procedures, including quick clearance, eliminating warehousing costs, and reducing conflicts between customs and businesses personnel".
He added that e-clearance was a step towards international integration.
Other enterprises concurred, calling it a "backward step" to stop e-clearance.
Around 350 companies regularly use the service. The office has handled 20,000 cases this year.
Hung said online customs declaration, which enables users to send all the information relating to their cargo to customs offices, should be introduced nation-wide first before e-clearance is revived.
It is only in use in a few major cities now.
In HCM City, 90 per cent of all firms requiring customs clearance make their declaration online.
The e-customs clearance system was first introduced in 2005 in HCM City and Hai Phong to eliminate corruption and reduce the time taken for import – export procedures.
Many businesses have become frustrated with the time taken by customs to process their transactions and blame this on the old computers and unreliable Internet service in the city.
vietnamnews
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