The trading of smuggled and counterfeit goods in HCMC is on the rise, challenging local market monitors, according to the city’s market monitoring agency.

The agency said in a report released on December 30 that most of the goods were consumer goods, equipment and spare parts imported illegally from China.

Last year, the agency inspected nearly 7,200 sites, up 104.69% compared to the year earlier and detected more than 5,490 violations, including over 1,700 cases related to smuggled cigarettes with nearly 640,000 packages confiscated.

Besides motorcycles, smugglers also use cars to transport illegal cigarettes from Long An and Tay Ninh provinces to the city.

The agency seized about 7.1 million items and nearly 540 tons of consumer goods without invoices and documents. These products include children’s clothes and toys, cosmetics, beer, alcohol, milk, mobile phones, electronic devices and appliances, automobile and motorcycle parts, chemicals, monosodium glutamate, sugar and dried food.

Regarding food safety, the agency has inspected more than 600 enterprises and household businesses, and has destroyed 140,000 items and approximately 150 tons of food, including beer, monosodium glutamate, sugar, food additives, dried food and wines.

The agency has destroyed about 16,000 helmets imported illegally from China and confiscated 4,300 tons of industrial chemicals.

Last year, the agency collected fines totaling VND89 billion from more than 5,000 violators. The total value of destroyed goods is more than VND11 billion, rising 33.66% year-on-year, and confiscated goods that will be put up for sale are estimated to cost VND36.5 billion.

* Increasing volumes of goods smuggled from China have seriously affected the domestic manufacturing sector, according to the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI).

The WTO Center under VCCI said in a report that the illegal imports of goods of low quality into Vietnam has hit domestic products of same type and sent local producers into a tailspin.

China’s data always showed higher trade in goods with Vietnam through border gates than that indicated by Vietnam’s figures, meaning large volumes of goods traded with China are out of Vietnam’s records.

In 2012, Vietnam reported imports of US$28.8 billion from China and exports of US$12.8 billion to that market, but the figures of China were US$34 billion and US$16.2 billion respectively, according to the report. The difference must have come from the volume of goods smuggled.

“Vietnam’s management of the quality of imported products is weak, which has allowed a lot of low-quality products to enter the country and thus affected the health of consumers,” the report said.

Vietnam has 62 land, waterway and sea border gates, including 29 land border gates with China in seven mountainous provinces in the north, not to mention 43 sub-border gates with 30% of them opened to China.

Controlling exports and imports through all of these gates is a big challenge for local authorities, according to the report of the WTO center.

As a result, the situation has affected tax collections, the environment, security, public health and local producers.