Global Food

On September 20, 2017, Li Keqiang presided over the executive meeting of the State Council, the meeting decided to extend the transitional period policy of retail and import supervision of cross-border electronic commerce to the end of 2018 and speed up the improvement of the relevant system. The news immediately aroused widespread concern in the industry.

The policy document on retail and import refers to the “Notice of Ministry of Finance, General Administration of Customs and State Administration of Taxation about the taxation policy of retail and import of cross-border electronic commerce (No.18, 2016 of Ministry of Finance and General Administration of Customs), and no clear documents have been issued by the State Council and relevant ministries, it is not clear what specific policies are included in the transitional period, especially the special food as infant formula milk powder involved in the “Announcement about publishing the commodity list of retail and import of cross-border electronic commerce” and “Announcement about publishing the commodity list (second batch) of retail and import of cross-border electronic commerce” which is also the positive list of commodity referred in the industry, according to the provisions of China Food and Drug Administration, from January 1, 2018, product formula of domestic and imported infant formula milk powder shall be registered through the China Food and Drug Administration. The remarks in the “Commodity list of retail and import of cross-border electronic commerce” issued by Ministry of Finance defined that the cross-border e-commerce products are also applicable. So the industry is in urgent need of the document issued by relevant regulatory authorities to clear and definite, if the registration transition period was unchanged, the development of cross-border electronic commerce of infant formula milk powder may be affected.

Extension of supervision transitional period for one year gave a certain time to the practitioner of cross-border electronic commerce to adjust suitably in short term, but it cannot solve the fundamental problem, once the transitional period is over, the final policy will be released, cross-border electronic commerce will face the problems of “positive list”, “Single quota of 2000 yuan, and annual quota of 20000” again, etc.; in the long term, although there are some uncertainties, the changes will not affect the overall trend, from the meeting of the State Council we can see that the country is supporting the development of cross-border electronic commerce. If there were adjustment in the future, adjustment may mainly focus on the taxation, category of list and buying quota. Foodmate will continue to focus on how it will change.

It is known that the relevant supervision authorities of cross-border electronic commerce are Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation, AQSIQ, General Administration of Customs and so on. The Foodmate reminds all cross-border electronic commerce companies to keep a close eye on the latest policy developments issued by these departments, including but not limited to positive lists, negative lists (mainly referred to the listed products in “Work specification of business entity of cross-border e-commerce and commodity filing management” issued by AQSIQ”), tariffs, quotas and other types of dynamic conditions.