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Fake goods fight stepped up
Ha Noi remains a ‘hot' spot for illegally imported and counterfeit goods, said the Vice Head of the Ministry of Public Security's Department of Economic and Office Crime Investigation Lieutenant Colonel Thanh Kien Trung.
According to sources quoted in Kinh te va Do thi (Economy and Urban) Newspaper, smuggled goods transported to the capital city consisted mostly of cigarettes, cosmetics, alcoholic spirits, and chemicals. Some banned products such as smuggled children's toys, military equipment and firecrackers, have also been found in city markets recently.
Statistics from the General Department of Customs show that about 300 cases of illegally imported goods worth VND15 billion (US$789,400) were seized in the past five months.
Ha Noi Market Watch also reported inspection teams had found more than 1,000 cases of smuggling and seized goods worth VND4 billion ($210,500) during the last two months alone.
Counterfeit goods have also been reported in city markets. The department found the most popular counterfeit goods to be cosmetics, fertilisers and gasoline.
About 70 per cent of smuggled and counterfeit goods were reported to have come from China, Trung said. Smugglers employed a number of tricks to evade the authorities, such as wrongly declaring the name and number of goods, or using false invoices.
According to Vice Head of the Ha Noi Market Watch Vuong Tri Dung, smuggling remained a complicated and hard-to-solve problem because the responsibility of preventing smuggling requires the cooperation of many authorities at different levels.
Dung said there were five agencies in charge of the work, including the market watch, inspectors, economic police, people's committees at all levels and customs, which led to administrative overlaps and poor checks.
In response to the impasse, Nguyen Thi Bach Nga from the Department of Competition Management suggested one unit should take all responsibility for combating smuggled goods.
The high cost of destroying smuggled and counterfeit goods also remains a problem, said Senior Lieutenant colonel Le Hong Son from the Department of Economic and Office Crime Investigation. Security equipment, spirits, cosmetics, pesticides, and livestock and animal organs were among products that are required to be destroyed.
But in recent days when a large quantity of spoiled animal fat was found, none of the relevant authorities dared to take responsibility for its costly destruction, an activity estimated to cost VND14 million ($736) per tonne.
To deal with the situation, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has asked the Steering Committee for anti- smuggling to step up inspection on imported steel, cigarettes, animal food and timber products.
The committee has also been asked to keep an eye on animal feed, drugs and cosmetics, to stop bad quality and fake products entering the market.
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