New Vietnam customs bond may roll out by 2019

The nonprofit Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation is working on modernizing the country’s customs bonding system.    Robert Kielbas, vice president for global development in Roanoke Trade’s Chicago office, said during a conference on Friday that he hopes Vietnam’s first customs bond under a new and modernized system will be issued by the end of this year.
   Kielbas is participating in the project being administered by the Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation (GATF), a nonprofit in which governments and businesses work together to identify trade facilitation issues and implement targeted reforms to address them.
   “I don’t want to be a soothsayer, but I would like to say that, hopefully by the end of this year, we will have actually written a bond in Vietnam, and what that would do, that would give them bragging rights to no end,” he said during the 97th Annual American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI) Conference and Expo in Baltimore. “In the international arena, that would show that they have made such an effort, and they have gotten their house in order so well that they have now made this massive effort to improve trade, to get goods across their borders.”
   The bond will be issued in Vietnam with no exclusions or deductibles and will largely address issues associated with clearances of small and medium-sized enterprises, Kielbas said.
   Vietnam’s new customs bond system will be similar to that used in the United States, GATF said in an April press release. “Vietnam will be the first country outside the United States with such an all-encompassing system.”
   That should help to streamline the country’s customs practices the highly economically competitive Southeast Asia region, as Vietnam currently maintains the highest rate of cargo holds globally, GATF Deputy Director Raul Perales said during the AAEI conference.