On May 29, Mr. Nguyen Tien Dat - Deputy Head of the Ho Chi Minh City Market Management Department said that in the first 5 months of 2025, the situation of smuggling, trading in banned goods, counterfeit goods, intellectual property violations, food safety... will continue to be complicated. Most of the violating goods are goods of unknown origin, smuggled goods including firecrackers, medicine, cosmetics, food, functional foods, electronics, components, household appliances, cigarettes, fabric, clothes.
The subjects often take advantage of e-commerce, social networks, and technology delivery services for business, making it difficult to verify and check. Smuggling activities are organized, by line, inter-provincial, transnational, with many sophisticated tricks, constantly changing. The subject used many social media accounts and e-commerce platforms to erase traces and remain anonymous.
Goods are often gathered in suburban areas, apartments, private houses, and delivered through intermediaries, making it difficult for authorities to check. Some popular tricks include declaring incorrect goods names, units, and labels to evade taxes; exporting goods that were not properly declared thanks to united inspection flows; taking advantage of preferential policies for production and processing for export to make profits.
In online smuggling, the subject uses online shopping, post offices, and express delivery to consume counterfeit, poor quality goods, directly affecting the health of consumers, especially functional foods, drugs, and fake cosmetics.
Regarding counterfeit goods and intellectual property violations, the subjects focus on high-value items such as modern medicine, foreign wine, fashion, etc. Usually small-scale production, direct delivery, changing foreign labels to Vietnamese goods for consumption.
Regarding the current difficulties, Mr. Dat said that the units are in the process of reorganizing the apparatus, so it affects inspection and control work. The collection and processing of digital information has not been properly trained, depending on personal capacity. Lack of temporary storage, limited allocation, appraisal and destruction costs. The sharing and verification of personal information between units is still slow and not timely.
E-commerce activities on mobile platforms are very complicated, creating fake accounts for business makes it difficult to identify subjects and warehouses. The ringleaders often do not directly participate, hire people, rent warehouses in deserted places, making it difficult for the investigation. Although many cases have been punished, due to high profits, many repeats have occurred.
For petroleum business, it is difficult to detect violations due to the lack of quick inspection equipment and a lack of specialized tank warehouses. In many cases, warehouses must be rented or businesses must preserve them themselves, causing loss and making it difficult to handle the exhibits.
