Removing energy labeling regulations - businesses profit billions of dong

After Circular 37, the Ministry of Industry and Trade is considering removing the regulation on energy labeling 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, because many regulations are still cumbersome, difficult to understand and cause frustration for businesses. The Minister assigned functional units to immediately review the regulated products, procedures, regulations or implementation stages that are still being complained about, causing difficulties and costs for businesses... and propose to amend them immediately.

While waiting for the circular to be revised and for the units to receive their opinions, 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 be able to declare information online. "How can businesses only have to go to the management agency once to submit their 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 in this period. However, when the program was made 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 per shipment. Thus, with this regulation, businesses importing many batches of similar products after 6 months still have to re-test to issue certificates and label. This causes businesses to waste time and cost a lot of money.

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