WCO mission to Vietnam

With the financial support of the Japan Customs Cooperation fund, a mission recently took place in Hanoi, Vietnam under the umbrella of the WCO’s Revenue Package programme, designed to assist Customs administrations in the identification and collection of revenue legally due on imported goods. Vietnam Customs had requested technical assistance on two key topics of the Revenue Package; Customs valuation and classification.

Two experts from Japan Customs worked with facilitators from the WCO to deliver parallel workshops on valuation and classification which had been tailored to meet the needs of Vietnam Customs.

The valuation workshop covered the high level principles of the WTO Valuation Agreement and a number of technical issues, including the linkage between Customs value and transfer pricing, royalties and licence fees, discounts and software-related questions. The workshop also covered good practices for valuation controls, including management of valuation risk, the use of a valuation database as a risk assessment tool, and post-clearance audit.

The classification workshop provided an opportunity to compare the national classification infrastructure and programme for pre-entry binding classification information with the standards recommended by the WCO, as well as to discuss possible improvements to the national model for tariff classification work and its related infrastructure. The workshop was also devoted to theoretical and practical aspects of tariff classification, General Rules of Interpretation, and specific Section Notes in line with the needs expressed by Vietnam Customs. Moreover, the participants had an opportunity to discuss with facilitators individual classification issues raised by Vietnam Customs.