Global ecommerce management, As a new form of commerce and has many differences compared to traditional commerce, cross-border e-commerce poses a number of regulatory challenges for countries to both ensure integration with international trade, while ensuring effective management.
Simply understanding, cross-border e-commerce is beyond a country, globally connected. Accordingly, consumers can place orders from all over the world and carry out completely on the Internet platform, from product information inquiry, ordering and payment.
For cross-border e-commerce activities, one of the problems that management agencies encounter is the control of goods, including quality control, origin … The main reason is due to the products with diverse origins with small value, the activities of commodity inspection and specialized inspection will be very fragmented. On the other hand, many products, often low-value products, do not have enough relevant papers and documents to prove their quality and origins, making customs clearance difficult. E-commerce across borders creates a variety of goods, but it is this diversity that makes the management agency insufficient resources to control the transaction process.
Global ecommerce management and Experience from a number of countries in the region
To deal with the arising of cross-border e-commerce, depending on the management goals and views on goods, countries will develop their own management policies. However, most countries still adjust their policies in the direction of simplifying administrative procedures to reduce storage and inspection time for e-commerce transaction products; reducing the volume of goods subject to inspection; and simplify the transaction process (order process, transaction, payment …).
China is one of the countries with the fastest cross-border e-commerce growth in the world, Global ecommerce management (an average of 30% per year) and is expected to become the largest cross-border e-commerce market in the world by 2020 (China Internet Watch).
Accordingly, China has brought about many preferential policies for e-commerce. Since 2012, the Chinese Government has selected 13 cities for comprehensive testing of cross-border e-commerce (1). China’s policies also aim to reduce the time and volume of goods that need to be inspected, including regulations that help reduce the volume of goods that need to be inspected; establishing separate quality control agencies for goods traded via e-commerce across borders, preferential policies on specialized inspection are also applied by China to simplify the customs clearance process (simple procedures, shortened time, some products do not have to be affixed with additional labels).
In addition, preferential tax policies are also applied such as tax exemption for products with tax rates of less than 50 Chinese Yuan, reduction of value-added tax on goods traded via e-commerce channels.
Regarding transaction methods, e-commerce websites that are selling goods in China have a data sharing connection with the customs office about order information, payment status, and real-time shipping of goods when customers buy products. Goods are exported from a warehouse in a foreign country and transported to a separate area for e-commerce goods controlled by customs authorities by courier service. After completing customs clearance, monitoring and inspection, the goods are delivered to customers.
In Indonesia, to simplify the customs clearance process for products traded via EC, customs control of goods traded via EC is implemented based on the value of the goods.
For goods that are traded through an e-commerce trading floor of less than US $1,500, the customs office shall receive customs declarations from postal businesses and collect taxes through the Marketplace electronic platform. For goods on e-commerce transactions sent to bonded warehouses without duty-free quotas, which are subject to the tax rate of 7.5% for goods valued at under US $1,500 and above US $1,500, MFN tax shall be applied and at the same time can have a three-year delay in tax payment.
In Korea, with the characteristics of goods through electronic transactions, most of which are personal products and small value goods, the transport and customs clearance of common goods will be done through courier companies, accounting for 70% of total courier goods in Korea.
The policies of Korea in the direction of minimizing the clearance time for e-commerce goods, including the establishment of a courier goods circulation center with scanning equipment with a maximum processing speed of 30,000 orders per hour. In addition, Korea formed the Customs Clearance Department for Express Goods of Incheon Customs, specializing in the management of express clearance of goods. South Korea also applies a mechanism that allows exemptions from the verification of conditions for electronic transactions that are worth less than US $2,000.
What can Vietnam learn?
Global ecommerce management, A new draft decree issued by the Ministry of Finance on the management of cross-border e-commerce activities in the customs field has begun to gain experience from a number of countries in the region, according to which Vietnam aims to build e-commerce management system to connect stakeholders in the transaction processing process, in order to accelerate the transaction.
Besides, measures to reduce the volume of products that need to be tested are also proposed. However, the project only focuses on issues related to the clearance of goods for immediate management, while there is no solution to promote e-commerce activities from enterprises. The issues related to payment activities have not been clarified, while this is one of the major issues that are hindering e-commerce activities.
With the current rapid development of cross-border e-commerce, this decree will need more breakthrough orientations and solutions to help Vietnam’s e-commerce industry quickly step onto the big playing field.
(1) The pilot localities include: Hangzhou, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Anhui, Zhengzhou, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Dalian, Ningbo, Qingdao, Shenzhen and Suzhou.
The trapped situation of e-commerce trading floor
For e-commerce trading floor in Vietnam, the payment on delivery is facing difficulties in buying foreign currencies and paying for goods sold to overseas sellers. According to the provisions of the Ordinance on Foreign Exchange 2005 and Decree No. 70/2014 / ND-CP, e-commerce trading floors need to present many new papers to buy foreign currencies transferred abroad such as foreign trade contracts, certification. received the goods from the consumer, the power of attorney from the consumer … The characteristic of EC is that the price of the traded product is usually low (about 80% of the value is less than US $30), the number of transactions is high, so the preparation of the above documents is practically impossible, not to mention the cost of a wire transfer of nearly US $20.
Trinh Hoang – Le Dung
* Source: Saigon Times