Associations in the livestock industry have just proposed 3 issues. These include deregulation of declaration of conformity with animal feed and veterinary medicines; building technical barriers to restrict the import of livestock products; No 5% value-added tax shall be imposed on livestock products in preliminary processing and preservation form when enterprises or cooperatives sell to consumers.
Proposal to remove regulations on declaration of conformity with animal feed and veterinary drugs
Livestock industry associations (Vietnam Livestock Association, Vietnam Large Cattle Breeding Association, Vietnam Poultry Farming Association and Vietnam Animal Feed Association) have just submitted a petition to the Prime Minister and Chairman of the National Assembly on some hot issues, need disassembly of the industry.
The associations said that the production of animal feed and veterinary medicine is a conditional business sector. Accordingly, production and trading establishments of these items must meet the production conditions assessed and appraised by state agencies for issuance of certificates before production and annually have the agency's maintenance supervision assessment. In addition, there are periodic and irregular inspections and inspections by other authorities of the ministry or locality.
In addition, enterprises producing animal feed and veterinary drugs must also comply with regulations. Assessment of product regulation conformity announcement - in essence, assessment of production conditions and processes, typical sampling for testing. Thus, the assessment and declaration of conformity for animal feed products and veterinary drugs by conformity certification bodies is duplicate and overlapping.
Meanwhile, the cost of assessing and announcing conformity with animal feed products and veterinary drugs is very expensive. Currently, businesses have to pay a fee of 2-4 million VND for each sampling of an animal feed product and 10-20 million VND/vaccine product. If calculating for a business with hundreds of products, it takes billions of VND for product conformity, not to mention wasting the time of the business in law enforcement.
Therefore, the associations petitioned the Prime Minister and the Speaker of the National Assembly to remove the regulation from the Law on Veterinary Health and the Law on Animal Husbandry.
Removing difficulties about value-added tax
Another bottleneck is that according to the provisions of Clause 1 Article 1 of the Law on Value Added Tax 2016, non-taxable subjects are cultivated, livestock, aquaculture and fishing products that have not been processed into other products or only through normal preliminary processing of organizations, individuals producing themselves, catching and selling and at the stage of importing. Enterprises or cooperatives that purchase and sell products, livestock and aquatic products aquaculture or fishing that have not been processed into other products or only through normal preliminary processing sold to other enterprises or cooperatives are not required to declare and pay value-added tax, but are entitled to input value-added tax deductions.
Livestock products such as poultry eggs are cleaned, packaged; meat of cattle and poultry after slaughter, cooling, freezing ... If purchased, sold or exchanged by enterprises or cooperatives, they are exempt from 5% value-added tax. But if enterprises, production and business cooperatives sell this item to people and individual business households, there must be a tax of 5%.
According to associations, this regulation is causing a lot of difficulties for the consumption of domestically produced livestock products. Because in our country, the majority of unprocessed livestock products are being consumed at individual business households and in traditional markets. If livestock products through preliminary processing and industrial slaughter have incurred a lot of costs compared to manual slaughter, they have to add 5% value-added tax, they will not be able to compete with floating livestock products without quality control, safety, tax and with imported livestock products of the same type.
Associations and associations said that in the livestock production chain of our country, the weakest stage is slaughter and processing. This issue has been adopted by the State with many guidelines and policies to encourage development in the direction of concentration and industry, but so far it has not succeeded. Many enterprises invest in modern and expensive factories and equipment lines, but the products made cannot be consumed, the actual production output only accounts for about 30% of the designed capacity. The main reason is that manual slaughter activities have not been controlled in terms of production, business conditions and tax policies. In particular, the 5% value-added tax policy of preliminarily processed livestock products is an obstacle for enterprises and cooperatives, while the State does not collect much for this tax line.
Therefore, associations and associations petitioned the Government and the National Assembly to amend this content in the Law on Value Added Tax and suspend the implementation pending the amendment of the law.
Prevent the risk of "super import" of livestock products
In addition, associations and associations said that in order to export meat and poultry egg products, we have to bear many strict technical barriers in importing countries, making our livestock products are weak and disadvantaged at home.
Meanwhile, the massive import (official and smuggling) of livestock products into our country is currently a serious problem, causing many risks and consequences such as causing unfair competitive pressure with domestic livestock products; At the same time, it poses a great risk to food quality and safety for consumers.
At the current import rate, only in the next 3-5 years, when the tariff lines of imported livestock products reach 0%, Vietnam will become a super importer of livestock products. Therefore, associations and associations petitioned the Prime Minister to direct departments, ministries and sectors to urgently develop technical barriers and trade policies to minimize the official import of livestock products.
Source: People's Delegate Newspaper (original article link HERE)