The coronavirus outbreak in China and solutions to promote trade with Việt Nam were discussed at a meeting of the National Steering Committee for ASEAN Single Window (ASW), National Single Window (NSW) and Trade Facilitation Committee in Hà Nội yesterday.

The meeting was chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Vương Đình Huệ with the participation of representatives from ministries and business associations.

Huệ said the coronavirus epidemic was making the country’s economic and trade relations difficult, especially for agricultural produce. Of the US$40 billion in export turnover Việt Nam makes from agricultural products, a third comes from China.

Huệ said domestic enterprises were making great efforts and had increased production to supply essential goods for anti-epidemic work without raising prices, such as antibacterial hand sanitiser and medical masks.

“The Government has acknowledged this support from businesses and plans to exempt import taxes on masks and the materials used to produce them,” Huệ said.

Following discussions with the Ministry of Finance, he said if tax exemptions were applied, it would cost about VNĐ400-500 billion.

"But that's nothing compared to our focus on disease prevention," he said

Lê Duy Hiệp, chairman of the Việt Nam Logistics Business Association (VLA), said he would encourage members to reduce warehousing fees by 10-20 per cent, especially cold storage, to help trade centres and supermarkets to buy agricultural products from farmers.

“This is a practical way logistics enterprises can support the efforts being made by the Government and the people to prevent the coronavirus from spreading,” Hiệp said.

“We expect this to create a close connection between logistics enterprises and domestic producers and business enterprises, helping each other and farmers to reduce the damage caused by the epidemic," Hiệp added.

Regarding the National Single Window (NSW), Deputy General Director of the General Department of Customs Mai Xuân Thành said the NSW had connected 188 administrative procedures from 13 ministries and State agencies, and processed 2.8 million records from more than 35,000 businesses by the end of last month.

Regarding the implementation of the ASEAN Single Window (ASW) and out-of-ASEAN connectivity, Việt Nam had now officially connected the ASW to exchange electronic origin certification form D with eight ASEAN countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos.

As of January 31 this year, Việt Nam had received 165,061 certificates of origin from ASEAN countries while sending 201,652 certificates of its own.

Regarding connections with non-ASEAN partners, the Ministry of Finance had completed technical tests to connect and exchange messages for export customs declarations between Việt Nam and the Eurasian Economic Union.

The ministry was negotiating with the Republic of Korea and New Zealand on an electronic exchange for C/O. It was also working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development to study the exchange of electronic quarantine certificates with New Zealand.