VietNamNet Bridge - Electronic customs has been officially introduced at some ports since mid-December to quicken goods clearance but frustration has grown among enterprises as they are struggling with the slower procedures.

Tran Cong Liem, deputy manager of the delivery department of Mekong Company in HCMC, complained the information processing speed on day one of e-customs application on December 15 was even slower than previously.

“We transferred our file in the morning but waited until the evening to know whether it had been received or not. This means we spent twice as much time on the procedure,” he told the Daily on the sidelines of an e-commerce course held on Wednesday by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

He added his company had not received any notice from the customs as promised.

Another company, G.P, got a cargo permit number for a shipment to the U.S. just 15 minutes after the file was uploaded on the e-customs system half a month ago but it had to wait more than three days to know whether his cargo belonged to the red, yellow or green line, said Thanh Tam, an import-export executive of the firm.

Normally, the customs system checks data and issues the cargo permit number immediately followed by the status of cargo. “The smooth flow in the normal customs clearance procedure is the biggest advantage when compared to e-customs,” he said.

Another trouble enterprises have to cope with is poor infrastructure and processing system. Enterprises might incur extra logistics cost due to delays in cargo delivery.

A customs officer has blamed the problem on system overload, which will happen when it receives too much data at the same time.

At a meeting between customs leadership and businesses a week ago, Nguyen Quoc Toan of the Supervision and Management Bureau under the HCMC Customs Department mentioned three major problems with e-customs – insufficient network infrastructure, equipment and software.

Internet congestion is another problem, he said.

Pending an improvement in e-customs, enterprises are advised to switch to the manual customs clearance procedure whenever the electronic system runs into trouble.

A pilot e-customs clearance scheme was launched in 2005 and has since been expanded to 13 provinces and cities to facilitate trade and streamline the ship entry procedure, which requires 22 to 46 documents per shipment, according to the General Department of Customs.

Source: SGT