Stopping Year-End Smuggling and Trade Fraud

Smuggling and illegal transport of goods are seemingly increasing on land, air and sea traffic routes. The Vietnamese customs sector is, therefore, concentrating on many solutions to deal with this problem as the New Year is coming.

According to statistics, in the third quarter of 2020, market watchdogs detected and handled more than 63,100 violations, collected nearly VND4,400 billion for the State Budget, and prosecuted 369 cases with 454 violators.

In the first nine months of 2020, competent authorities detected and handled more than 138,400 violations, collected nearly VND15,679 billion for the State Budget, and prosecuted 1,497 cases with 1,800 violators.

Mr. Dam Thanh The, Chief of the Standing Office of the National Steering Committee 389, said that the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak caused significant impact on socioeconomic performance. Smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeiting tended to be changed with more complicated tricks, items, routes, areas or fields.

“Smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeiting are latent and complicated, especially drug trafficking, smuggling, illegal transport of used goods, counterfeit goods, intellectual property-violated goods and origin-faked products,” he said.

However, currently, when social activities return to normal, smuggling and illegal cross-border trafficking, trade fraudulence and counterfeiting of goods tend to increase again, mainly consumer goods, clothes, toys and electronic gadgets.

Drug trafficking is still latent and complicated, mainly seen in Son La, Lang Son and Dien Bien provinces. Illegal transport and smuggling of medical masks of unknown origin are still complicated. Notably, smugglers are very aggressive, ready to fight against authorities when they are uncovered.

In the southwestern border line, smugglers tend to take advantage of loopholes to smuggle and illegally transport used goods, refined sugar and cigarettes across the border.

In particular, on international post and air routes, smugglers focus on goods of high value and easy to hide such as gold, wildlife products, foreign currencies, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, functional foods, high-end fashion, technology equipment, foreign alcohol, cigarettes and cigars.

Mr. Nguyen Van Can, General Director of the General Department of Vietnam Customs (GDC), said, customs authorities intensified joint patrol and regular control in key areas; focus on strictly controlling banned goods such as drugs, weapons, firecrackers, toxic cultural products, documents with bad contents, wild animals and plants, high-taxed products, brand-counterfeited products, Vietnamese origin-faked products, knockoffs and substandard products such as gasoline, cigarettes, fertilizers, alcohol, beer, consumer goods, medical masks and appliances for pandemic prevention.

In the past nine months, customs authorities have discovered and handled nearly 14,000 violations and collected VND1,885 billion for the State budget.

From now to the end of the year, smuggling and illegal transportation of goods is forecast to be further complicated, especially items preferred during the Lunar New Year. The GDC has directed local customs to strengthen prevention and combat against smuggling, trade fraudulence and counterfeiting of goods such as petroleum, minerals, cigarettes, old electronic gadgets, pharmaceuticals, functional products and special products used for Covid-19 prevention.

By Hien Le, Vietnam Business Forum