(Lunar New Year Festival).

HCM City is holding more inspections to fight smuggled and fake goods. VNA Photo Thanh Chung

The city also instructed the tax department to study anti-fraud activities in e-commerce.

At a meeting on September 13, Tran Huu Linh, general director of the Viet Nam Directorate of Market Surveillance, said that sales and purchases of fake branded goods in HCM City were still at a high level. A recent inspection, for example, found that a business in District 3 was selling fake Samsung Galaxy Note 10 smartphones.

Fraud in e-commerce is complicated, with transportation businesses saying that around half of their deliveries are from e-commerce platforms, and many of them consist of fake or low quality products.

The HCM City Steering Committee 389 said that in the first eight months this year, over 36,000 violations occurred, double that of the same period last year.

Tran Vinh Tuyen, vice chairman of HCM City People's Committee, said the increasing number of discoveries of violations made by authorities showed their efforts in tackling fraud and smuggling, but the issue remained problematic.

In addition to more inspection periods, authorities will work with 24 districts and urge local residents to be aware that storage spaces rented for a short period might be used to store smuggled goods.

Leaders in charge of smuggling and production of fake goods should be the main target of authorities, according to Dam Thanh The, chief of the secretariat of National Steering Committee 389.

VNS