Eleven units assigned to test fertiliser quality - and to grant quality certification to production and business facilities nationwide - would face severe punishment for violations, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) said.

An inspection conducted recently by the ministry showed Vinacert Certification and Inspection Joint Stock company, one of the eleven units, issued faked certificates to 36 fertiliser products.

The fertiliser testing and control centre in the southern region can only certify phosphate and diammonium phosphate fertilisers legally. But more than 1,200 inorganic fertiliser products not under centre jurisdiction were wrongly issued certificates.

The centre also presented certificates to 496 fertiliser products not on the ministry certification list. And they failed to supervise fertiliser quality when these 496 products were delivered on the market.

The company is also guilty of not following proper certification procedures because they did not save any fertiliser samples, as required by law.

At other companies, inspectors found fertiliser products had been improperly certified without any legal documents.

Surprisingly, these eleven facilities do not have any business registration and their laboratories are not qualified to conduct the necessary fertiliser analyses. The experts working at these facilities reportedly do not specialise in inspecting and certifying fertilisers.

The Department of Crop Production was also discovered to have handed authority to a coffee inspection company to monitor feriliser quality.

Nghiêm Phú Trường, head of MARD’s inspection team, told dantri.com.vn that after violations were noticed inspectors reported the case to the MARD minister and proposed removing the violators’ authority.

Regarding punishment levels, in an interview with the Lao Động (Labour) newspaper, National Assembly (NA) deputy Nguyễn Sỹ Cương, a permanent member of NA’s External Relations Committee, said the violations are a sign of corruption and of abuse of  power and position to commit violations.

Due to the serious negative impacts on the nation’s agriculture sector, MARD Minister Cao Đức Phát asked ministry agencies to impose punishments in accordance with State laws, without any shield.

The inspectorate ordered the Department of Crop Production to review its responsibilities regarding this issue. Violators were asked to withdraw illegally-granted fertiliser certificates. The team also submitted inspection documents to the Ministry of Public Security for further investigation.

Counterfeit and shoddy fertiliser products have reportedly plagued markets nationwide. Farmers suffer most from fake products.

Statistics provided at a national conference on fighting fake fertilisers last year showed that Việt Nam suffers losses of US$2 billion per year from fake fertilisers.

VNS