Proposal to abolish regulations on product and goods conformity declaration

Continuing the 9th Session, on the morning of May 10, the National Assembly discussed in the hall the Draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Technical Standards and Regulations. In particular, many delegates gave their opinions on the regulations on conformity declaration for products and goods.

National Assembly delegate of Bac Ninh province Tran Thi Van speaks. Photo: Doan Tan/VNA

At the Hall, delegate Tran Thi Van (Bac Ninh) said that there are currently about 20 Associations representing hundreds of member enterprises and VCCI has organized many scientific seminars to analyze, evaluate and clarify the impact of this regulation on management efficiency and they all have the same recommendation to abolish the regulation on conformity declaration in the Draft Law. Many National Assembly delegates also spoke to propose abolishing this regulation.

Delegate Tran Thi Van emphasized that when there are too many opinions reflecting on the inadequacies, inconveniences, and waste from the practical application of the law, along with referring to the world's experience that no country applies this regulation, we need to seriously absorb, evaluate objectively, fully and comprehensively in the context of the Party and State promoting reform, perfecting institutional policies, creating an open business environment... Especially Resolution No. 68-NQ/TW of the Politburo on private economic development that General Secretary To Lam has just signed and issued.

Analyzing and pointing out a series of shortcomings of this regulation, the delegate said that the current regulation on conformity declaration is just a formality, overlapping and unnecessary procedure. Group 2 products - which are goods subject to conditional production and trading - have been fully assessed and certified according to legal standards or international systems such as ISO, HACCP, GMP, etc. When these standards are met, it means that the enterprise has been guaranteed in terms of material conditions, human resources and quality control processes.

“Forcing businesses to repeat the entire process of testing, sampling and evaluating to declare conformity - just to “reconfirm what has been confirmed” - is absurd and wasteful,” the delegate analyzed.

Furthermore, the current regulations on conformity declaration only focus on controlling individual activities through a sample that the enterprise brings for testing. This leads to the fact that enterprises can cope by making good samples for testing, but mass production is not good. Thus, even though there is a conformity declaration, the product may still not be of guaranteed quality when it reaches consumers.

In addition, conformity announcement creates additional administrative procedures and business conditions, increasing costs and waiting time, reducing the competitiveness of domestic enterprises.

According to the delegate, to complete a procedure of declaring conformity for a product, a business must pay an average of 3-5 million VND, even up to 15-30 million VND/product. It is worth mentioning that this procedure must be repeated every 3 years, creating a continuous cycle of waste. For a factory with 300-500 products, the cost can increase to 1.5-2 billion VND. In addition, each product is only declared conformant for one factory, which means that a business with many production facilities must repeat this unreasonable procedure, causing systematic waste.

Not only is it costly, but conformity declaration also delays the production and distribution cycle, directly affecting the speed of market access. In addition, conformity declaration hinders import and export activities and goes against international trade principles.

“Why do we have to continue to maintain a procedure that causes large-scale waste and invisibly becomes a “disguised sub-license” - completely contrary to the spirit of reform and reduction of business conditions that the Government is pursuing?” – delegate Van emphasized.

Also giving her opinion on this issue, delegate Nguyen Thi Kim Be (Kien Giang) said that the conformity procedure should be abolished because it is not in line with international practice. If this regulation is kept, Vietnam will be the only country in the world that still maintains this type of procedure. If this type of procedure is kept, there is a risk that trade partners will perceive it as a non-tariff barrier.

According to the delegate, in reality this regulation is not effective in practice, so the current world practice is to let businesses apply technical standards for their goods, and the state, through its monitoring tools, conducts post-inspection if it detects that products and goods do not meet standards.

Member of the National Assembly Standing Committee Le Quang Huy presented a report explaining, accepting and revising the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Technical Standards and Regulations. Photo: Doan Tan/VNA

Presenting the report on explanation, acceptance and revision of the draft law, Chairman of the Committee on Science, Technology and Environment Le Quang Huy said that there were opinions suggesting consideration when simultaneously regulating the procedures for declaration, certification of conformity and procedures for granting circulation licenses or registration numbers for a number of products and goods in group 2 in the specialized Law.

In response to this opinion, the draft Law has added a provision according to the principle that each product, commodity, service, process or environment is only regulated by one unified technical regulation nationwide, except in cases of decentralization and delegation of authority according to the provisions of law (Point a, Clause 3, Article 26a).

The draft Law also adds provisions on cases where conformity declaration is not required and is stated as in Article 69a of the draft Law. Such provisions will overcome the situation of having to simultaneously carry out two procedures for conformity declaration according to the Law on Standards and Technical Regulations and the corresponding requirements and management measures in specialized laws.

Mr. Le Quang Huy also said that there are opinions that testing, certification, and declaration of conformity for products and goods in many cases are repeated, causing costs, increasing time for businesses, and hindering and delaying export activities.

“In response to the above comments, Article 48 of the draft Law has added a provision on conformity declaration based on the results of conformity certification by a recognized or registered certification organization in accordance with the provisions of law to limit the need for repeated testing and certification, which is costly for businesses,” said the Chairman of the National Assembly’s Committee on Science, Technology and Environment.

The draft Law has been revised to add provisions on mutual recognition agreements, allowing unilateral recognition of conformity assessment results of foreign organizations to facilitate export and import of goods, in accordance with international practices and new generation FTA commitments (Article 57 of the draft Law). Such provisions do not hinder or delay export activities.

According to baotintuc.vn

Source: https://huengaynay.vn/chinh-tri-xa-hoi/kien-nghi-bai-bo-quy-dinh-ve-cong-bo-hop-quy-san-pham-hang-hoa-153468.html