In recent years, the Da Nang Customs Department has taken various effective measures to promptly detect violations relating to smuggling, trade frauds, and illegal transportation of goods, as well as reduce time and costs taken for handling import and export procedures.

Customs staff operating container scanners at the Da Nang Port

Amongst, the use of container scanners has been promoted over recent years in order to facilitate local importers and exporters to reduce their time taken for customs procedures, and improve the efficiency of state management about customs.

Since early this year, a container scanning system at the Customs Division of the Da Nang Port’s Border Gate has scanned for a total of 110 containers under 27 customs declarations.

The average time taken for scanning is between 3 and 5 minutes per container. If adding the time for inputting data to the system, the checking process via scanners is about 20 minutes per customs declaration.

Therefore, the use of container scanners has brought many benefits for import-export activities, especially for anti-smuggling activities.

For instance, after scanning three 20-feet containers which were unloaded from the Sunsine Bandama ship in March, the city’s relevant agencies discovered more than 9.1 tonnes of suspected ivory and over 42m³ of wooden logs in a container. The case has been under investigation.

In addition to using container scanners, the city’s Customs Department has applied the E-manifest system which is a module used by airlines, shipping lines and forwarders for the submission of manifest and shipping documents. The purpose is to promptly detect shipments with suspicious items in order to implement pre-scanning process for imported goods.

Apart from the above-mentioned positive results, there are some shortcomings in the use of container scanners. In particular, the efficiency of using container scanners is still modest because it depends on many factors such as items, warehouses, and loading and unloading capacity.

The Deputy Director of the Da Nang Customs Department, Mr Nguyen Huong, highlighted the significance of the use of container scanners in reducing the pressure on customs staff, and minimising time taken for handling customs procedures.

He added that the Department has annually organised training courses on container scanning for customs officers in a bid to enhance their scanning capacity.