Removing energy labeling regulations - businesses profit billions of dong

After Circular 37, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is considering removing the energy labeling requirement for imported equipment. It is estimated that removing this difficulty will save businesses billions of dong.

Consumers are interested in products with energy labels.

On the afternoon of October 18, Minister of Industry and Trade Tran Tuan Anh worked with the General Department of Energy and members of the drafting team to amend Circular 07 on energy labeling, due to many regulations that are still cumbersome, difficult to understand and causing frustration for businesses. The Minister assigned functional units to immediately review the regulated items, procedures, regulations or implementation stages that are still being complained about, causing difficulties and costs for businesses... and propose immediate amendments.

While waiting for the circular to be revised and for comments from units, the General Department of Energy needs to immediately notify businesses while improving the working process. At the same time, there needs to be a mechanism for businesses to complete online information declaration procedures. “How can businesses only have to go to the management agency once to submit documents instead of going back and forth several times? Technology can absolutely help with this,” Minister Tran Tuan Anh emphasized.

The Energy Labeling Program was implemented voluntarily by the General Department of Energy, Ministry of Industry and Trade from 2006 to 2011. Because it was voluntary, less than 10 businesses registered to participate during this period. However, when the program became mandatory, the number of businesses registered increased rapidly. Of which, the 7 imported products that were certified and labeled the most were air conditioners, refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, electric fans, rice cookers and lighting.

However, during the implementation process, the certification and labeling process causes many difficulties for businesses. For example, Circular 07 stipulates that businesses are allowed to use test certificates within 6 months for the form of certification of labels on each shipment. Thus, with this regulation, businesses importing many shipments of the same product after 6 months still have to re-test to issue certificates and label. This causes businesses to waste time and incur a lot of costs.

According to the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham), to be labeled with energy efficiency and certified for minimum energy consumption, manufacturers or importers must have their goods sampled by a unit designated by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The inspection can take several weeks or even months, depending on the products and the workload of the inspection units. In fact, thousands of products are still regularly kept in stock for months waiting for inspection results, causing significant costs for manufacturers and importers.

AmCham believes that most of the world's famous equipment manufacturers such as Apple, Dells, Canon, Sony, HP, Samsung... are applying international standards on energy efficiency. The products of these companies have been tested by internationally recognized units before being put on the market. Therefore, the regulation requiring these products to be re-tested is unnecessary and inappropriate, especially in the limited conditions of capacity and resources of testing organizations in Vietnam. According to AmCham, this is an unreasonable requirement that is "turning" Vietnam into the first and only country in the world to require testing for each shipment.

According to VOV