On November 3, the Animal Health Department under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development issued a document saying that customs clearance will be considered for seafood containers, transported directly from fishing boats to import places without processing on land and Health Certificate.
That means containers must stay at ports to wait for the Animal Health Department to synthesize, report to the ministry and ask opinions.
For the last ten years, this line of goods has been imported normally without Health Certificate according to international practice. Consignments just go through transit ports in some nations so their authorized agencies can not grant Health Certificate.
Currently, nearly 50 seafood containers without safe certificate are stuck in ports with demurrage charge reaching hundreds of millions of dong. Some processing plants have halted operation for being short of materials.
Adding to the woes, customers demand contract penalty for late goods delivery. Besides the number of containers stuck in ports, nearly 200 others are on their way to enter Vietnam in November and December.
Therefore, VASEP proposed the ministry to urgently clear the barriers for businesses to reduce damage and stablize production and trading.
