Commercial fraud is rampant
More than half a year has passed since the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA) reflects the massive import of rolled steel into Vietnam and suspects this to evade trade safeguard duties but the situation continues. It is estimated that the price of steel imported from China and without safeguard will be 30-40% cheaper than domestic steel. “Even before, when enterprises imported rolled steel, they gave the reason that the country could not produce but in fact, these are products that Vietnam has produced and the supply is higher than the consumption.
Change product code when importing, adding additives, even hiding in the form of scrap. Millions of tons of foreign iron and steel have been rushing into Vietnam.
Representatives of some steel enterprises said that the situation of importing steel products with “alloy” elements so that the import tax rate of 0% instead of 5-10% (depending on type) has been reflected for many years but still take place continuously. The director of a steel-making enterprise in the south said that during the manufacturing process, the product had been removed from boron (boron element) or chromium to be named “alloy steel” to have import tax rate 0 %, but actually all of this steel is imported into Vietnam for construction. Of course, this product is cheaper than domestic brand-name construction steel and is mostly consumed in provinces and remote areas. More importantly, there are products that are cheated on raw materials such as reducing the thickness of the product, mixing impurities will reduce the quality of steel. There are even units when importing steel but declare completely different products such as marble products, toilets …
The state failed to collect taxes and enterprises struggled
Import statistics for the past 5 years by the customs authorities also show that the number of violations in the import of iron and steel is leading with 83 times, chemicals are 37 times, textiles are 12 times …
To protect domestic production, Vietnam has applied anti-dumping duty on iron and steel products imported into Vietnam. But these measures have almost no effect.
