VietNamNet Bridge - Circular 20 with strict requirements on the quality and usage time of used equipment, which faced strong opposition from the business circle, has been replaced with a new Circular 23. However, many questions are still pending.

Circular 23 stipulates that used equipment must have the usage time of less than 10 years to be eligible for import to Vietnam. The equipment must be made in accordance with Vietnam National Standards or G7’s safety, energy savings and environment standards.

As such, with the new regulation, used equipment to be imported could be five years older than in the old regulation. There is no requirement on the remaining quality of used equipment (under the old regulation, used equipment imports must have the remaining quality of 80 percent at minimum).

The difficult task the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST) has to take when drafting the legal document is that it needs to set up regulations which are strict enough to prevent outdated technologies and flexible enough to allow enterprises, which are mostly small and medium scale, and don’t have money to buy the technologies of latest generations, to maintain their production.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) pointed out that the biggest problem of the Circular 20 was that it sets the same usage time ceiling for all kinds of equipment, while in reality, the equipment’s technologies in different production fields are different. Five-year old equipment could no longer be more useful in some industries, but they are still helpful in others.

Therefore, VCCI proposed MST to set different requirements on the equipment imports for different groups of industries.

However, the proposal has been ignored by MST. The ministry only made one compromise by extending the limit on equipment usage time to 10 years. Meanwhile, it has removed the requirement on the remaining quality of imports.

Explaining the decision, the circular compilation committee said the regulation on imports’ remaining quality would not be feasible because Vietnam lacks inspection experts who can examine the imports to find out the remaining quality of used equipment. 

Meanwhile, the required procedures on equipment inspection will place difficulties on enterprises and cause deadlocks at customs clearance.

However, VCCI pointed out that in principle, the remaining quality of equipment should be seen as the indicator which can show the quality of products and if equipment could be imported to Vietnam.

Therefore, VCCI believes that in the long term, the state needs to prepare legal and physical conditions to help establish a goods examination market in which import machines and equipment can be examined.

TBKTSG