On July 29, at a regular briefing on policies to further deepen cross-border trade facilitation reforms and optimize port business environment policies held by the Information Office of the State Council, reporters asked the General Administration of Customs on how to strengthen supervision of fees and prices, clean up and standardize port fees and other issues.

In response, Huang Guansheng, member of the Party Committee of the General Administration of Customs and director of the National Port Management Office, said that on July 21, the State Council held an executive meeting to study measures to further deepen the reform of cross-border trade facilitation and optimize the business environment at ports. At present, there are still some "blocking points", "difficult points" and "pain points" in the process of port business environment. In response to these, the General Administration of Customs has corresponding specific measures in the policy to be implemented.

Dang Yingjie, deputy director of the National Port Administration Office of the General Administration of Customs, said that the evaluation of cross-border trade facilitation generally considers both customs clearance efficiency and compliance costs. Therefore, it is very important for enterprises to regulate and rationalize import and export charges. In recent years, the General Administration of Customs, in conjunction with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Commerce, and the State Administration for Market Supervision, has conscientiously implemented the relevant national policies on tax reduction and fee reduction, and jointly adopted measures to coordinate the cleanup and regulation and promote the reduction of imports and exports. Significant results have been achieved in link compliance costs.

Dang Yingjie said that last year, seven departments including the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport, the General Administration of Market Supervision, and the General Administration of Customs jointly issued and implemented the Action Plan for Cleaning up and Regulating Maritime Port Charges, and proposed to promote the improvement of port charge policies and establish maritime transport. A series of policy measures such as the supervision, examination and investigation system of port charges, and the regulation and guidance of shipping companies’ charges. At present, this plan is being advanced in an orderly manner. While introducing these plans to regulate related corporate fees, the State Council has repeatedly studied the issue of tax reduction and fee reduction in its executive meeting last year. In order to reduce the impact of the epidemic on companies and help companies tide over the difficulties, since March 1 last year Port construction fees for import and export cargo were exempted, cargo port fees and port facility security fees were reduced by 20% respectively, and preferential enterprise policies such as phased reduction and exemption and reduction of port fees have achieved tangible results. In 2020, about 15 billion yuan will be waived for port construction fees nationwide, and 960 million yuan will be reduced for cargo port charges and port facility security fees.

Dang Yingjie said that in response to the impact of the epidemic, the General Administration of Customs has introduced measures such as delaying the payment of taxes and reducing or exempting late insurance fees and late fees. In 2020, the customs implemented various policies to reduce (rebate) taxes of 268.77 billion yuan. Among them, since the introduction of the reform measure of "first release before inspection" for bulk mineral imports, it has saved companies about 3.6 billion yuan in port storage fees.

Dang Yingjie also stated that there are still some "pain points" and "difficulties" that some companies are concerned about in the current port charges. The new round of measures will further focus on the concerns of market entities. "Export link costs" and correspondingly designed three key tasks. After these measures are introduced, they will further promote the reduction of import and export costs and help enterprises develop. In the next step, the key to the work of the General Administration of Customs is to properly implement these policies and measures.

Transfer from: The Paper