Customs staff check goods during customs procedures. — Photo tapchitaichinh.vn
The General Department of Customs has required the customs departments of provinces and cities to intensify inspections to fight origin-related fraud, violations of intellectual property (IP) rights and illegal transport of import and export goods.
It has also instructed provincial and municipal customs agencies to supervise and control those issues according to existing regulations.
The general department said that it has discovered an increase in trade fraud in connection with goods labelling and IP rights.
It said relevant forces have uncovered many cases in which imported goods were labelled “Made in Vietnam”, “Manufactured in Vietnam” and “Originated in Vietnam”, or labels on product packaging and warranty card in Vietnamese for consumption in Viet Nam.
Traders have taken advantage of legal documents on not requiring sub-labels at customs clearance to import goods and then not attaching sub-labels but changing labels, packages and the names of goods for domestic consumption.
The general department also detected the import of goods with counterfeit registered trademarks, or the transport of counterfeit goods and goods violating IP rights.
For goods imported to Viet Nam with the aim of getting special preferential tax under free trade agreements, importers used fake or invalid certificates of origin (C/O) to implement customs procedures or declare false information on the C/O.
A number of enterprises, including foreign-invested ones, import raw materials, semi-finished products, components and spare parts for production, processing and assembly, but their products for export do not undergo processing and manufacturing stages or undergo simple processing, manufacturing and assembling stages that do not meet the origin criteria prescribed.
However, they still label the products with Vietnamese origin when exporting. Some enterprises imported goods with the aim of legalising goods’ dossiers or applying for C/O to give the goods Vietnamese origin, for exporting to a third country. — VNS