2. There is a widespread belief among the BCO and LSP community that facilitation payments (“tea money”) to officials from the General Department of Vietnam Customs (Vietnam Customs, for short) and the highway police are needed to keep imported and exported components, raw materials, and finished goods moving through supply chains with minimal delays. This belief leads to a high incidence of such payments in practice, artificially inflating logistics costs for customs clearance, customs brokerage, cargo inspections, and trucking. Moreover, this adds a nontransparent, uneven layer to international
(and to a lesser extent domestic) trade activity.