Advancing Digital Transformation to Better Support Citizens and Enterprises

The customs sector has been focusing on specific tasks to better support people and businesses, including accelerating administrative procedure reform, modernizing customs, applying digital transformation and providing online public services.

The customs sector is developing an advanced IT system to implement digital customs

In the third quarter of this year, the General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDC) received and processed nearly 4.9 million records, of which almost 4.4 million records were settled online, making it the largest number of customs declaration forms.

GDC has launched actions to speed up administrative reform, including administrative procedure reform, improving the business environment, and enhancing policy consultancy for the Government and the Prime Minister. To carry out the Project “Developing applications of population data, electronic identification and authentication for national digital transformation in the 2022-2025 period, with a vision to 2030”, GDC has reviewed and compiled statistics on 25 customs-related administrative procedures that used information in the national database on population and citizen identification. Additionally, GDC has actively coordinated with relevant agencies to exchange and agree on plans to connect and share data between the General Department of Customs and the National Population Database.

GDC is focusing on building an IT system to adopt digital customs to meet professional requirements in customs clearance. The investment policy was approved by the Ministry of Finance in Decision 1957/QD-BTC dated September 15, 2023. Currently, GDC is completing all contents and plans for surveys, drafting survey report forms, basic design reports, and feasibility study reports before implementation, and reviewing all professional matters and functions to complete technical requirements and other related contents that are appropriate, synchronous and consistent.

In the third quarter of this year, GDC launched an action plan to raise the quality and efficiency of delivering its online public services in 2023. There are a total of 225 customs administrative procedures, including 214 procedures handled by customs agencies: 133 completely online administrative procedures, 60 partially online administrative procedures, and 21 administrative procedures with online information provision.

To carry out its Digital Transformation Plan in 2023, GDC organized the second meeting of its Steering Committee for Digital Transformation in the third quarter. The agency reviewed and completed its Digital Transformation Plan for 2025 with a vision to 2030 and the Digital Transformation Plan in 2023 in line with the Digital Transformation Plan of the Ministry of Finance. GDC continued to deploy professional customs application systems like piloting the payment of export and import taxes and fees through payment intermediaries, building duty-free store management systems, and building vehicle monitoring software for customs control areas.

By Le Hien, Vietnam Business Forum