He was speaking at a workshop themed "HCMC Customs Objectives with Strategic Solutions for Trade Facilitation” organized by the department in coordination with U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on February 28.
According to Mr. Thang, Cat Lai Seaport in District 2 has the total area of 200 hectares but partial cargo congestion has been occurring in the port. The HCMC Customs Department has implemented a trade facilitation project to deal with cargo congestion in the port which reduces time on doing customs procedures for businesses by 70 percent compared to regulations in the Customs Law. Businesses have a seperate area to do customs procedures in Cat Lai Seaport, able to supervise the process of handling customs procedures online with their smartphones.
Mr. Le Duy Hiep, chairman of Vietnam Logistics Enterprise Association proposed that customs brokers should improve professionalism and logistics cost should be reduced because it is higher than that in some nations in the region.
Moreover some businesses said that abidance by law is also costly and time consuming, it is costlier than paying penalties for breaking regulations.
