The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has released a draft decree providing state inspection of quality and state inspection of food safety for imports, focusing on the simplification of order and procedures for inspection, application of principles of risk management and commodity-based inspection, and information technology in inspection process.
As per the draft, methods of state inspection of quality and state inspection of food safety include tightened inspection, normal inspection and random inspection. Goods that have been granted registration codes of regulation conformity declaration or those not yet granted registration codes of regulation conformity declaration but meet requirements in three consecutive tightened inspections would be transferred to normal inspection. Goods with three consecutive satisfactory normal inspections would be transferred to random inspection. The transfer of goods among inspection methods would be done automatically through the Vietnam National Single Window. Organizations and individuals would search on the Vietnam National Single Window to determine methods of inspection and submit dossiers of registration for state inspection of quality and state inspection of food safety as appropriate.
The draft decree also reduces inspection documents and consolidates documents to be included in a dossier in order to avoid overlapping of specialized documents in the same dossier. Particularly for goods subject to random inspection, enterprises would have to submit dossiers only if having 5 percent of goods subject to random inspection (the remaining 95 percent of goods would only have to make registration for inspection).
Also to simplify inspection procedures, the MOF proposes inspection to be carried out based on commodity items, i.e., selection of identical goods for the system to decide to change the inspection method to be based on commodity items.
The draft also emphasizes publicity, transparency, connectivity and sharing of information. Accordingly, ministries, sectors, customs offices and conformity assessment bodies would have to update information on the Vietnam National Single Window about goods exempt from inspection; goods eligible for transfer of inspection methods; goods subject to registration of standard conformity declaration, regulation conformity declaration and self-declaration; results of inspection of quality and food safety; list of goods for which advanced management systems have been applied or treaties have been signed and those subject to warnings.
Worthy of note, importers would have the right to select inspection agencies (for goods subject to normal and tightened inspections); select organizations in charge of certification or assessment; and search goods information on the Vietnam National Single Window to register for inspection by appropriate methods.- (VLLF)
