The application of the new electronic customs clearance and a station operating system has brought remarkable efficiency and benefits to import and export businesses, an official said.

During a meeting held on Friday in Ha Noi, Bui Thai Quang, deputy head of the risk management team of General Department of Viet Nam Customs, said the e-customs procedures, referred to as VNACCS/VCIS system, helped reduce cargo clearance time, paperwork in customs documents, and saving costs during procedure completion, as well as the state administration of customs.

The VNACCS/VCIS, based on Japanese models, the Nippon Automated Cargo Clearance System (NACCS) and Customs Intelligence System (CIS), is a modern e-clearance system dedicated to electronic processing of air and cargo to enable faster and more efficient customs clearance.

VNACCS/ VCIS system was officially operated on April 1, 2014 and has been implemented in all customs departments nationwide, aiming to support enterprises best in customs declaration such as automatically apply tax rate, exchange rate for calculating tax, automatically calculate taxable amount, payable tax, automatically alerts incorrect declared items.

The system also automatically checks, numbers and allocates red, green or yellow channels for customs declaration 24/7.

Under the system, cross-border goods are classified into three types according to the degree of risk, which are easy access or green channel, yellow channel and red channel.

The clearance of goods via green channels takes only three seconds so goods can quickly go through the customs formalities without any inspection since they have no risks.

Moderate risk products undergo yellow channel which require some types of customs documents including foreign trade contracts, commercial invoice, packing list and certificate of origin, quality inspection, tax certificate and other documents.

All high risk products are diverted to the red channel, which requires a variety of documents and physical inspection to be completed.

According to Quang, in the first seven months of this year, among over six million cross-border goods undergoing the custom clearance procedure, 57.53 per cent of them were diverted to green channel and 37.46 per cent of goods flew through the yellow channel.

Only 5.01 per cent passed through the red channel. This, according to Quang, even exceeded the goal set out by the government (below 7 per cent of goods undergoing red channel toward 2020).

The VNACCS/VCIS, built at a cost of US$21.2 million and funded by the Japanese government, contributed to stimulating the country’s economic growth and strengthening connectivity between Việt Nam and the global economies through ASEAN’s one-stop-shop mechanism, he said. — VNS