Tracing the origin of goods is increasingly becoming an essential need.

Reporter (PV): What role does tracing the origin of goods play for businesses and consumers, sir?

Comrade Nguyen Hoang Linh: Tracing the origin of goods is not a new activity for businesses. Many businesses have systematically applied national and international standards to the product manufacturing process. Tracing the origin helps control quality and safety and is also a tool for businesses when encountering problems with defective products supplied to the market, they have a way to trace and recall the product.

Comrade Nguyen Hoang Linh. Photo: QUANG DUY

When buying and using products, consumers need to find out information about the origin of the product to avoid using fake, counterfeit or poor quality products. Previously, with stamps and labels on the product, the information was very limited, incomplete or inaccurate. Nowadays, technology solutions for tracing the origin have been widely developed so that consumers can easily trace the origin of the product through their smartphones. From there, products on the market are transparently controlled in quality, consumers have confidence in the products of the business.

PV: What are the current difficulties in traceability, sir?

Comrade Nguyen Hoang Linh: The first difficulty today is that not all businesses apply technological solutions on traceability, ensuring information transparency for consumers. Second, there are many solutions on traceability, but whether those solutions are true to the nature of traceability or not, whether they really provide accurate information about businesses and products to consumers or not, we still have not been able to control.

Therefore, Vietnam must have a way to standardize both the technical and standard aspects of the traceability solution for unified implementation in Vietnam. In addition, we need to learn about foreign traceability requirements to support businesses in the process of exporting goods.

Need to understand the traceability requirements of export markets

PV: According to you, what do Vietnamese enterprises need to do to meet the requirements of tracing the origin of goods when exporting goods abroad?

Comrade Nguyen Hoang Linh: Previously, businesses did not pay much attention to the issue of traceability, only focusing on production. When foreign markets put forward technical barriers and traceability requirements, businesses could not prove it, causing many orders to not be exported. To avoid this situation, businesses, especially those exporting to foreign markets, need to determine whether those countries have traceability requirements, in addition to other requirements, and what those countries' traceability requirements are.

In particular, businesses need to apply national standards on traceability, join the business community to provide traceability solutions that can be linked to the National Product and Goods Traceability Portal, because this portal has been built in accordance with international standards, supporting businesses to demonstrate to countries importing Vietnamese products. In case of difficulties or problems when countries have stricter traceability requirements, businesses need to contact the General Department of Standards, Metrology and Quality for timely support.

Reporter: Currently, what solutions are the management agencies implementing for the traceability of Vietnamese goods, sir?

Comrade Nguyen Hoang Linh: The Prime Minister has approved the Project on deploying, applying and managing the traceability system (Project 100) chaired by the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2019. The Government also issued Decree No. 13/2022/ND-CP dated January 21, 2022, which supplements regulations on traceability of products and goods. Thereby, the Government assigns tasks to ministries and branches in unifying state management of traceability to have mechanisms to promote the development of national standards in accordance with international standards, and issue guidelines for the business community in different fields to apply traceability in a transparent and unified manner.

People in Ha Long City, Quang Ninh Province learn about environmentally friendly products. Photo: QUANG DUY

The General Department of Standards, Metrology and Quality has directed the National Code and Barcode Center to build a national product and goods traceability information portal that meets international standards. This will be a tool and a bridge connecting consumers with businesses and also a bridge connecting traceability solutions to increase the value of Vietnamese goods. In addition, the General Department has also directed its affiliated units to develop more than 20 related national standards to guide businesses in applying traceability.

PV: Thank you very much, comrade!

LA DUY (performed)