Launching Vietnam trade information portal
Deputy Prime Minister Vuong Dinh Hue, Minister of Finance Dinh Tien Dung, World Bank’s Acting Country Director Sebastian Eckardt, and Director General of Vietnam Custom Nguyen Van Can jointly push a button to formally make the Vietnam trade information portal (VTIP) go live on July 12.
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Hosted by the General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDVC) under the Ministry of Finance, with support from the World Bank Group in Vietnam, the portal is expected to help improve the predictability and transparency of the country’s trading laws and processes, giving foreign and domestic investors quick access to Vietnam’s trade rules.
The initiative is the latest government effort to increase access to informationand to comply with the World Trade Organization’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.The website will include existing trade regulations and procedures such as laws, administrative procedures, guidance notes, forms, licenses, permits, and applicable fees in both Vietnamese and English.
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Having a single portal containing all trade regulations and procedureswill save businesses time and operational costs, especially for small and medium enterprises interested or involved in the import, export and transit sectors.
Some of VTIP’s other features include: an overview of Vietnam’s economy, business startup process, import and export guide, customs terminology, as well as information on special economic areas, export processing zones, cross-border trade and GSP automation; international, regional and bi-lateral trade agreements to which Vietnam is a party, including applicable rules and requirements as well as associated benefits; a selection of websites of international organizations or institutions that can bring further support to overseas expansion and tools allowing exporters to perform trade potential analysis, desk research and market surveys.
The portal is also expected to improve trade regulations themselves, as legislators are now able to easily identify the complexity of current regulations and procedures when applied to commodities and to suggest areas of modernization and simplification while easily monitoringthe progress of such processes.
Vietnam has climbed 9 spots to 82 from 91 on the World Bank's Doing Business 2017 ranking, and moved 15 spots up to 93 from 108 for improved border-trade indicators related to import-export operations. VTIP is a major steptowards Vietnam’s goal of being one of the top 4 easiest places for doing business in ASEAN by 2020.
