The Ministry of Industry and Trade is collecting comments on the Proposal for Comments on the Draft Decree amending and supplementing a number of articles of Decree 107/2018/ND-CP on Rice Export Business.

In the Report to the Prime Minister on Amendments to Decree No. 107/2018/ND-CP of August 15, 2018 on Rice Export Business (Decree No. 07), the Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed to supplement the Rice Export Regulations with Regulations on the Management of rice and travel imports.

The ministry said increasing rice imports could increase competition between imported rice and domestic products, affecting the lives of producers and indirectly affecting food security.

Due to the fact that rice imports are too high, but without proper and timely management and statistics, it will affect domestic manufacturing activity, rice production in Vietnam and farmers’ lives, and indirectly affect food security.

Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Trade believes that there is a need to have regulations for managing rice imports based on the following criteria: quantity, value, type, market of export customers and importers; Import Border Gate to help government management agencies to regulate and manage rice import activities in a proactive and timely manner, in line with management objectives in each period.

Commenting on the issue, VCCI said the draft adds management of rice imports when the amount of imported rice increases, which may affect domestic production. However, given the need for this regulation, the addition of the scope of the regulation for rice imports must be considered.

According to the VCCI, import management measures are prescribed in the law on foreign trade control and detailed regulations. The application of all measures, the application bases and the application conditions are prescribed, and the state bodies must refer to these regulations when making the application.

Regulations such as the current draft are not clear enough, for example it is not clear according to which criteria “increases likely to affect domestic production” are to be assessed? It is not clear what import management measures the government agency is proposing?…

The application of import restriction management measures not only brings positive effects, as mentioned in the draft report, the increase in rice imports in the past period is intended to serve the production of other raw materials, other goods such as animal feed, beer, etc. Vietnam is shifting to the export of premium rice varieties.

Therefore, the application of import management measures may affect other domestic manufacturing enterprises, leading to an increase in production costs, shortage of input materials and reduced competitiveness of goods from Vietnam,” commented VCCI.

In addition, the VCCI stated that the application of import management measures should also take into account the interests of the companies that use raw materials for production.

Therefore, the VCCI recommends that the editorial agency consider adding this rule. The import management according to VCCI should apply the provisions of the foreign trade management law uniformly. The draft may foresee the provision of information by other government bodies to allow the managing authority to have more information when making decisions (as the draft foresees).

In addition, the draft amends a number of regulations related to documents and procedures for rice export transactions: Supplemental documents demonstrating that facilities meet standards and regulations; The Ministry of Industry and Trade carries out the inspection after 30 days from the date of issue of the certificate; The Department of Industry and Trade may request the Department of Industry and Trade to review and verify the trader’s documents, information and applications for authorization if there is any doubt…

According to the VCCI, this process is complicated, it is not clear whether the design of the regulations is in the direction of pre-examination or post-examination when it comes to submitting dossiers and documents before and the examination immediately after the certificate is issued. The VCCI proposed a change to the editorial agency towards the removal of post-licensing terms and conditions review regulations. The inspection will only be carried out if the Ministry of Industry and Trade doubts the authenticity of the dossier…