Customs and Business Dialogue: Looking for the Best Form

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) cooperated with the General Department of Customs to hold the “Cooperation and dialogue model for ASEAN customs and businesses” on February 28, 2008. Several lecturers shared their experience in customs-business dialogue models in Singapore and Sweden.

 

Mr Le Manh Hung, General Director of General Department of Customs, said the relationship between customs and businesses has now reached the partner level and is continuously improved for further mutual benefit. The general department, competent bodies and the business community have closely cooperated to hold dialogues increasing information exchange between authorities and enterprises to realise the goal of full regional commercial facilitation, meeting WTO requirements.

 

At present, there are a lot of dialogue models between customs authorities and enterprises, including instruction, direct Q&A, online Q&A, documentation, conferences, seminars and training for importing-exporting enterprises. Annually, the general department joined hands with VCCI to hold customs-business dialogue. In 2007, it held two conferences to settle 200 issues raised by 140 companies. 620 participants attended the conferences. However, there is no common model for customs-business dialogue.

 

After introducing paper-free commerce at the 6^th ASEM Customs Seniors conference in the UK, Singapore and Sweden collaborated to develop a model to enhance cooperation between customs authorities and enterprises in which both sides play active roles. The cooperation model has three levels: demonstration, policy-making and strategy-making. The strength of this model lies in the reciprocal impacts between the three levels. The demonstration level is the basic level of the model and businesses have a chance to put forward or discuss an issue with customs officials. At this level, it is necessary to provide diversified service channels to give connections with customs to enterprises and create a method to propose viewpoints and ideas. Policy-making is a deeper level than demonstration. This level includes customer orientation, customs procedure simplification and consistent implementation of customs laws. The strategy-making level is the smallest level, represented by a few selected businesses and organisations of the business community. This level consists of discussions about policies and projects to enhance commercial facilitation.

 

In the integration and globalisation trend, businesses and customs must have closer relationships. The maintenance, cooperation and exchange of ideas between the two sides will help reduce business costs and perfect customs procedures. Therefore, experts said enterprises should take a wide view to working with customs, to build the best mechanisms and models for the business community.