Under "Chaos And Prosperity" -- Yiwu Foreign Trade Clearance Dilemma Remains To Be Solved

Customs clearance efficiency is gradually becoming the focus of foreign trade.

The outgoing degree is as high as 65%.

"At present, the speed of customs clearance in Yiwu is still not up to date."

Wang Hong, who worked for freight forwarding company for many years, had to worry about the turnover of goods.

To some extent, the efficiency of customs clearance has not only increased the cost, but also eroded the profits of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Cross sectional difficulty of clearance

Recently, Fang Ming of Yiwu has been unable to cope with the "shrinking" of foreign trade profits.

Fang Ming worked as a general manager of Jewelry Import and export in a large private enterprise. On the one hand, he was responsible for the production and operation of the factory's first line, and he also contacted foreign businessmen to export his products abroad.

As the RMB exchange rate continues to rise against the US dollar, foreign businesses are becoming more and more difficult to do.

Leather factory Wang Liang said, generally speaking, at the end of the year and the beginning of the year is the most prosperous business of foreign trade, to 7, 8, 9, three months foreign trade business will fade.

But this year is quite different.

This year, export growth has slowed down considerably compared with last year.

"The original company's export volume is expected to grow at a rate of 40%, but only 10% now."

Fang Ming analysis said that almost all foreign businesses in the industry reduced the order, "for example, the original order 500 thousand, now reduced to 200 thousand, 300 thousand."

When Fang Ming worried about the decline of profits, Wang Hong, a freight forwarding company in Yiwu, was worried about the turnover of goods.

According to Wang Hong, they are mainly responsible for assisting foreign businesses in declaring goods, contacting convoys, shipping companies, and so on to earn service charges.

"On the one hand, the speed of customs clearance in Yiwu is still not up to date."

Wang Hong for example, for example, a shipment of goods from Yiwu to the United States, first of all in Yiwu customs and other departments declaration, inspection and contact van van to Ningbo port (601018), once again accept Ningbo customs declaration, commodity inspection and so on.

As Yiwu exports are small commodities, a large number of goods, each commodity detection time, two commodity inspection has increased the flow of goods.

If it takes a week for Yiwu to send to Southeast Asia, it will take 30 days to send it to Russia, and it will take 60 days to send it to Africa.

The support of logistics to the Yiwu market has been showing signs of weakness.

Last year, Yiwu's small commodity export containers reached 570 thousand TEUs, and the design capacity of the international logistics center was only about 100000 TEUs / year, far exceeding the load.

At present, there are 2311 logistics enterprises in Yiwu, of which 1126 are domestic logistics enterprises, 1051 are international freight forwarding warehouses, 134 are express logistics enterprises, with an area of 1 million 50 thousand square meters and an annual delivery volume of 28 million 850 thousand tons.

"Chaotic prosperity"

Zhuo Yongliang, director of the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of development and reform, pointed out that the institutional changes in Yiwu over the past 30 years were mainly promoted at the non-governmental and grass-roots level, and characterized by "chaotic prosperity" for a long time.

"Although this" chaos "is not bad, because" chaos "just shows a strong internal vitality, but after all, it also shackles the pformation and upgrading of the Yiwu market.

Zhuo Yongliang said.

Zhao Ping, deputy director of the Ministry of Commerce and Trade Department of the Ministry of Commerce, pointed out that the Yiwu mode has its unique vitality compared with other foreign trade.

Processing trade accounts for half of China's total exports, while Yiwu's exports are dominated by general trade, while processing trade accounts for a relatively low proportion.

She said: "in the future, China's pformation of the mode of foreign trade development, to increase the proportion of general trade, and to enhance the competitiveness of independent products brands in the world, and to set up a comprehensive reform pilot of international trade in Yiwu, is of great significance for exploring the pformation of the development mode of foreign trade."

Zhang Handong believes that Yiwu's small commodity trade has the characteristics of small scale, more trade subjects and frequent pactions, which are different from the two trade modes of general trade and processing trade in China. The export containers are mostly cabinets. There are usually more than ten kinds of products. When there are hundreds of products, they can easily lead to irregularities such as discrepancy of single goods and avoidance of customs clearance.

He said that the contradictions in Yiwu were reflected in the following: on the one hand, the efficiency of customs clearance has become the focus of social concern; on the other hand, illegal acts of smuggling, restricting goods and infringing intellectual property rights by smuggling of commodities have occurred repeatedly, which has adversely affected the export of small commodities.

Zhao Zhongxiu, Dean of the Institute of international trade and economics of the University of foreign trade and economics, pointed out that the contradiction between export regulation and the supervision of government functional departments is a bottleneck which is difficult to break through due to institutional reasons.

A pilot test in Yiwu will provide a breakthrough for China's foreign trade pformation.

Zhao Ping pointed out that in order to improve the degree of electronic trading in the market, Yiwu should not stay in the traditional rival trading as much as possible. Two, we must establish a credit system for pactions, which is the guarantee of market development, and establish a market paction database and blacklist system to reduce the occurrence of paction frauds. The three is to reform the logistics system, establish a modern logistics system and improve the efficiency of customs clearance.

Link: the reform process of customs clearance in Yiwu

Before 2003, the export of small commodities in Yiwu was mainly declared at ports, and the customs in charge mainly adopted "door to door" supervision.

At the beginning of 2003, in view of the situation that the export of small commodities doubled, Hangzhou customs and Ningbo customs reached a consensus on deepening the customs clearance reform across the customs area, and put forward the idea of "one market, common management, two customs, barrier free customs clearance", and put into practice the supervision mode of "cross border declaration and port release".

At the same time, the competent customs also directed against some law-abiding enterprises, and explored the centralized supervision mode of small commodity foreign trade warehouses.

Since December 2004, the Hangzhou customs has implemented the centralized supervision mode of "advance declaration, entry and inspection" for small commodities.

In 2007, the Hangzhou customs implemented 9 measures, namely, the export supervision system of small commodities, the centralized inspection and approval system, and the declaration system of the real list of small commodities.

The improvement of these regulatory measures is to consider the export of small commodities as a general trade commodity. There are various drawbacks such as difficulty in classification, difficulty in nuclear price, high cost and low efficiency, which is the optimization and improvement of the regulatory authorities in the system at that time.

To speed up the clearance of small commodities in Yiwu, the General Administration of Customs has "tailored" the regulation to the Yiwu market. Since September 1, 2007, the "shopping mode" has been applied to the export of small commodities.

First, clear the nature of the trade, stipulate that foreign tourists or domestic trading companies purchase in the small commodity market of Yiwu, do not apply for export tax rebates and foreign exchange verification, and use container shipped and exported Yiwu commodities.

Second, simplify declaration procedures and improve customs clearance efficiency.

In view of the characteristics of small export commodities, such as complex varieties, low value of goods, difficult to declare item by item, and direct market purchase and cash payment in Renminbi, a simplified classification method for small commodity export declarations is implemented.

The appearance of tourism shopping mode was undoubtedly a "timely rain" for Yiwu's small commodity exports, which temporarily relieved the contradiction of customs clearance efficiency.

But this "timely rain" only humid the land, the enterprise is still "thirsty".

The implementation of the mode of purchase of goods for several years has also revealed its inherent limitations, mainly in the following aspects:

First, it is still an expedient measure.

Tourism shopping is usually a kind of non profit - making act, which is produced in the course of tourism.

The General Administration of Customs has borrowed this model, covering those trade practices that carry foreign currency notes and foreign currency bills through the tourist channels, go through customs inspection and entry, pfer to foreign exchange designated banks into Renminbi, and carry foreign currency into the renminbi by customs inspection and carry out commodity purchase, inspection, declaration and purchase of goods to the domestic market for sale in the domestic market.

However, most businessmen in Yiwu do not come to travel. The export of small commodities is more business behavior.

Two, the scope of application is obviously restricted to export trade.

"Tourist shopping goods" refers to small quantities of goods exported by foreign tourists or foreign merchants, which are valued at less than US $50 thousand (including) and exported by means of freight pportation.

For the export declaration of such commodities, the customs department adopts simplified classification, and the purchase trade of each single trade can only be less than 50 thousand dollars. In fact, the value of goods in a container is generally over 300 thousand dollars.

Three, export tax rebates and other issues involving taxation have been unable to solve.

Customs tourism shopping mode supervision policy does not match with other department policies.

According to the documents issued by the State Administration of Taxation, the travel and purchase trade can not declare the export tax rebates. Foreign trade enterprises do not declare the export tax rebates to the tax authorities. The enterprises must pay the value-added tax to the tax department at 17% of the tax rate.

The export trade is a special way of export trade, while the travel and purchasing enterprises only act as agents in the export declaration section, collecting 0.03% agency fees, and obviously unable to bear the pressure of paying 17% value-added tax on export commodities.