Some National Assembly deputies said that current regulations on product conformity declaration both create loopholes and increase costs for businesses.

Cost overrun, creating loopholes

Discussing at the National Assembly hall about the draft Law amending and supplementing a number of articles of the Law on Technical Standards and Regulations on the morning of May 10, delegate Tran Thi Van (Bac Ninh delegation) said that there are currently about 20 associations representing hundreds of member enterprises.

The Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry has organized many scientific seminars to analyze, evaluate, and clarify the impact of regulations on conformity declaration for goods and products. They have a common recommendation to abolish regulations on conformity declaration for goods and products.

“When there are too many opinions reflecting on the inadequacies, inconveniences, and waste from the practical application of the law, along with referring to international experience, no country in the world applies the regulation on conformity declaration like Vietnam. We need to seriously absorb and abolish this regulation,” said Ms. Van and continued to propose to completely abolish the regulation on conformity declaration, not to retain a part as in the report on the review of the draft law.

Explaining this proposal, Ms. Van said that the current regulations on conformity declaration are just formalities, overlapping and unnecessary. Group 2 products are goods that are manufactured and traded under conditions that have been fully assessed and certified according to legal standards or international systems such as ISO and GMP.

Because when these standards are met, it means that the enterprise has been guaranteed the conditions of the quality control process. Forcing the enterprise to repeat the entire sampling and assessment process to declare conformity just to confirm what has been confirmed is unreasonable and wasteful.

In addition, current regulations on conformity declaration only focus on controlling individual activities, through a sample that the enterprise goes to test. This leads to the enterprise being able to cope by making good samples for testing but mass production is not good.

“This is a loophole for some fraudulent businesses to bring substandard goods and counterfeit goods to the market, such as the recent case of 600 fake milk labels,” said delegate Van.

According to Ms. Van, the announcement of conformity also creates additional administrative procedures and business conditions, increases costs and waiting time, and reduces the competitiveness of domestic enterprises’ goods.

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“Just to complete a product conformity declaration procedure, businesses have to pay an average of 3 to 5 million VND, even up to 15 to 30 million VND in some cases. It is worth mentioning that this procedure must be repeated every 3 years, creating a continuous cycle of waste,” said a delegate from Bac Ninh.

For example, for a factory with about 300 to 500 products, the cost can increase to 1.5 to 2 billion VND. In addition, each product is only declared to be compliant for one factory, which means that a business with many production facilities must repeat this procedure.

“This causes systematic waste, not only costing money, but also delays the production and distribution cycle, directly affecting the speed of market access for “Made in Vietnam” goods,” said Ms. Van.

Also discussing the declaration of conformity, delegate Nguyen Thi Viet Nga (Hai Duong) agreed with the addition of 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 in the draft law.

In addition, the bill also stipulates cases where conformity declaration is not required when the requirements and corresponding management measures in specialized laws are met.

If not, will review.

Explaining and clarifying a number of issues raised by delegates, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung said that regulations on conformity declaration are a tool to manage the quality of goods before they are put into circulation in the market.

Mr. Dung emphasized that if we do not have standards for management and supervision, including pre-inspection, not to mention post-inspection, it will immediately affect the health and safety of the people, the community, and the environment.

“All countries have those issues, such as the international standardization organization ISO 1750, the European Union, and other countries like China, Korea, etc. all have those things, so we must have them too,” said the Deputy Prime Minister.

The problem here is what type of management, how much management and how management to ensure state management of product quality before putting it on the market without affecting people’s health.

However, regulations must facilitate transparency and business operations, reduce costs, reduce compliance time and increase competitiveness for businesses and Vietnamese goods…

Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung gave an example: “About 30 years ago, there was a case of pho noodles containing formalin. At that time, we were very confused and because there were no regulations, each place managed differently and implemented differently. In Hanoi, each basket of pho noodles was stamped, but in Ho Chi Minh City, it was not like that. We set standards, regulations, and conditions and then did post-inspection. The two methods were different and without that, we could not manage.

Or most recently, we have heard a lot of problems about fake milk, candy, drugs, functional foods that are either fake or of poor quality. If we do not have these standards and regulations, how can we bring them to the market and affect people’s health?

“We will review in that spirit, which means we must both manage and create for development in accordance with the latest directive of the Politburo and the Secretariat, so that we can both manage and meet development requirements,” Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Chi Dung emphasized.