Viet Nam to Levy Special Consumption Tax on Mobile Phones

According to a report on April 29, 2010 from Viet Nam's Saigon Economic Times, Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade proposed to include mobile phones into the catalog of commodities under special consumption tax in its recent proposal for controlling import and limiting deficit. The report claims that mobile phones have been listed as a kind of import-restricted commodity. During the first quarter of this year, import-restricted commodities took on a growth by 38.6% year-on-year in import, which accounted for 9.5% of the total import volume.

The reason to levy the special consumption tax on mobile phones lies in that current import tariff on mobile phones has reached the highest level committed by Viet Nam when joining the WTO, and the tariff on mobile phones should be 0% according to the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement. In addition, Viet Nam's Ministry of Industry and Trade also proposed restricting the import of 3G devices and 3G mobile phones. The report claims that Viet Nam has imported 3G network devices at about USD 2 billion in total in 2009.