According to the Customs Department, customs authorities carry out procedures for exported and imported chemicals based on the provisions of customs law and chemical law, including the 2014 Customs Law, the 2025 Chemical Law and related decrees and circulars.
The Customs Department said that since the 2025 Chemical Law and guiding documents took effect, the Customs Department as well as regional Customs Sub-Departments have not issued any new guiding documents related to chemical import and export activities.
Customs inspection and supervision activities are still carried out according to the principle of risk management to facilitate businesses to well comply with the law.
Regarding customs dossiers, this agency affirmed that customs declarants do not have to submit additional documents outside the dossier set as prescribed in Circular No. 38/2015/TT-BTC and amended and supplemented documents.
However, according to the provisions of criterion 1.78 sample No. 01 Appendix II, the customs declarant is responsible for clearly describing the name of the goods, composition, content, and physicochemical properties of the goods so that the customs authority has a basis for determining codes, specialized management policies and tax policies.
According to the Customs Department, for yellow channel and red channel declarations, in case the dossier or actual inspection of goods is not sufficient to determine the name, code of goods or declaration information is incomplete and inappropriate, the customs authority has the right to request the declarant to provide additional technical documents and related documents.
In case there is still not enough basis to accurately determine exported and imported goods, the customs authority will conduct analysis, classification or request for appraisal as a basis for deciding on customs clearance according to legal regulations.
The Customs Department emphasizes that chemicals are special goods, requiring strict management and in-depth expertise. The request to provide additional information only applies when the dossier does not clearly show the composition, and there is not enough basis to determine whether the goods are on the list of conditional chemicals, chemicals subject to special control, or banned chemicals.
In case the dossier does not provide complete information on the concentration and content of chemical components, customs authorities also need to supplement the basis to determine whether the goods are eligible for exemption from licenses or certificates according to the thresholds of 0.1%, 1% or 5% according to specialized regulations.
Regarding the issue of trade secret security, the Customs Department said that according to the 2025 Chemical Law, information such as Chemical Safety Certificates (MSDS/SDS), CAS numbers, UN numbers, purity of compounds and level of harmfulness of additives and impurities are not within the scope of information to be kept confidential.
Therefore, the customs authority's request to provide basic identification information to serve state management is in accordance with specialized legal regulations and does not violate the principle of protecting trade secrets of manufacturers.
The Customs Department also said that it has proactively summarized the difficulties and obstacles in the process of implementing the 2025 Chemical Law and has a document proposing that the Chemical Department - Ministry of Industry and Trade soon have opinions so that customs authorities and businesses can agree in the process of carrying out procedures for exported and imported chemicals.
