ASEAN Customs Transit System (ACTS) Outreach and Training Workshop in Vietnam
Jakarta, 1st December 2020
ACTS is a major trade facilitation initiative in ASEAN, supported by EU-ARISE Plus. The system is designed to reduce the cost of transporting goods by road between ASEAN Member States, accelerating and simplifying official control procedures. ACTS is an automated Customs transit management system, offering electronic control of regional transit transport movements.
The Customs Department of Vietnam ran a virtual ACTS workshop on 1st December 2020. The participants include the private sector, including banks, the Government Transport Agency and officers of the Customs Authority of Vietnam. The main objective was to reach out to the private sector to raise the awareness of the benefits of ACTS in Vietnam, and to promote increased use of the system. The key issues for discussion included the use of bank guarantees needed under ACTS, and the procedures for using the ASEAN Goods Vehicle Cross Border Permit (AGVCBP). ACTS is flexible enough to handle the needs of each participating Member State in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that is, the need to change trucks and drivers at borders. ARISE Plus participated in this event, and provided more details on the operations of the system, including how to register as a Principal trader, obtain the AGVCBP, submit a declaration and how the control procedures operate.
Following a successful live pilot phase earlier in 2020, ACTS is now live and operational between the participating Member States, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The system will be expanded next year to include Myanmar. Brunei, Indonesia and Philippines will be included once their business needs have been established. Further planned enhancements include the handling under ACTS of dangerous goods, sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) goods and multimodal transport consignments. Please see the ACTS Information Portal for more information at https://acts.asean.org. More information on the EU-ARISE Plus programme can be found at https://ariseplus.asean.org.
