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Speaking at ChemCon held in Seoul on Jun 19, Mr. Le Viet Thang from Vietnam Chemicals Agency under the Ministry of Industry and Trade introduced Vietnam’s annual reporting system of chemicals. According to Mr. Thang, in the past companies were required to report many times per year, while now the different requirements are combined into one report, meaning companies only need to report once per year.
Annual reporting will be required before Jan 15th every year (or immediately in case of emergency) for all companies handling chemicals in Vietnam rather than just manufacturers/importers. The below information must be reported online through the National Chemicals Database (log-in first) to the Vietnam Chemicals Agency and the local authority, including:
General information of reporter
List of produced chemicals with volume
Status of production, trade and use of chemicals under LoC
Status of training activities
Status of prevent and response to chemicals incidents and accidents
The National Chemicals Database was launched in 2018, which provides information of chemical English/Vietnamese name, CAS number, in which list/inventory the chemical is included, hazard properties, etc. The interface for the new annual reporting is currently in Vietnamese only.
In Mr. Thang’s presentation, he also summarized some key challenges in development of Vietnam’s chemical legislation. Currently there is no definition of “Article” and there is no clear definition of different chemical activities. There are also no differences in compliance requirements between large enterprises and SMEs. In addition, Vietnam’s chemical management is license-based and has only scant provisions to assess and manage chemical risk.
For GHS, Vietnam adopted UN GHS Rev.2 from 2007, meaning that Vietnam is lagging far behind many of its global counterparts and trade partners. GHS compliance for general chemicals has been mandatory since Mar 30th, 2014 and since Mar 30th, 2016, for mixtures. There is no strict rule on SDS forms and only mandatory minimum contents are required. Thus, the companies can directly copy from the parents company who sell products to Vietnam.
