FINANCE MINISTRY TO ASSESS IMPACT OF FTAS QUARTERLY

First of all, it is to further enhance and unify awareness of all the units of the Ministry from the central to local levels of requirements, challenges of international economic integration. This is a key task in 2016 and subsequent years in order to improve financial institutions, creating a favourable business environment, enhance national competitiveness of enterprises and products; strengthen the mobilisation of resources at home and abroad to serve production and business development, to accelerate the process of restructuring the economy. Besides, the Minister requested the units to build a roadmap of implementing commitments in the field of finance such as the implementation of commitments on tariff harmonisation in ASEAN; develop a roadmap for the export tariff commitments in Vietnam-EU free trade agreement and TPP; improve policies to implement the commitments on insurance services, securities; complete regulations on the functions, tasks and mechanisms of action of Vietnam’s monitoring committee.
 
In the field of customs, the Minister of Finance requires further development, improvement of legal base to carry out commitments on national OSS; pilot programme for ASEAN Single Window Customs mechanisms from which to proceed formal enforcement of the ASEAN Single Window; continue to implement the tasks and major solutions to complete the reform of customs norms by the standards of ASEAN-4 in Resolution 19 / NQ-CP of the Government on the tasks and solutions essential to continue to improve the business environment, enhance national competitiveness in 2015-2016. Another important task is to enhance monitoring and assess impacts of integration to timely propose policy mechanisms. Specifically, the Minister asked to assess the impact of the implementation of integration commitments with regard to the state budget revenues to promptly propose solutions, reform of tax and customs to ensure balance budget; propose additional measures to implement the Strategy of Finance, Strategy of Tax and other strategies; complete database of commercial tracking of Vietnam, monitor changes in import and export of major commodities groups in each market on a monthly basis, detect potential export markets in various regions and publicize for the business community.
 
Every quarter, the units must assess the impact of the implementation of the FTA on import developments and the extent of the application of special preferential tax rates under the FTA to advise the Ministry to timely adjust the tax rate, propose application of trade defence measures, strict management of the origin of exported and imported goods to strengthen the anti-fraud tools in trade.
 
In the directive, the Minister of Finance emphasised the propagation of financial integration which requires promoting information, communication and dissemination of knowledge about international economic integration in the financial sector to the local, associations and businesses; strengthen and improve the quality of external information about the activities of the financial sector to contribute to attracting foreign direct and indirect investment to serve socio-economic development and financial markets. To do well the work of integration, the Minister also called for promoted training and strengthening staff capacity through enhanced exploitation and efficient use of resources in the form of financial and technical support, policy advice, support for training and capacity building from bilateral and multilateral partners; by actively sending cadres to work in major markets with higher exports.
 
Source: VCCI