Before zero hour of tightenly hand-carried goods: To clean the market

The majority of "hand-carried goods" are counterfeit and poor quality goods. Photo: TD

Worried about not having enough money to pay the fine

Understanding the interest of consumers that prefer foreign goods and have cheaper selling prices than genuine ones because they are not subject to tax, the market of "hand-carried goods" has been very vibrant recently, attracting a large number of customers. Not only professional traders, but also international students who are studying and living abroad are also engaging in business on this fertile land.

Along with that demand, the trading of counterfeit goods, goods of unknown origin, banned goods has been rampant, leading to the situation that consumers are deceived, buying smuggled goods labelled as "hand-carried goods".

According to the HCM City Consumer Protection Association, recently, the office received many complaints related to buying low-quality "hand-carried goods". Consumers bought hand-carried cosmetics from abroad for selling online. The first purchase was right product with high quality, but the second purchase was"fake goods".

However, because buying online "hand-carried goods", without papers, invoices and unknown seller so when consumers complained, the association could not find the seller and had no paper sheet and no basis to force the seller to take responsibility. Therefore, tightening management of this business was very necessary to protect consumers’ interests.

Before the "zero hour" when Decree 98 took effect, businesspeople were quite worried.

Some small traders operating "hand-carried goods" said in the past, they were not affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, so traders often went abroad to trade using tourist visas and were entitled to a tax refund of 10% immediately at the store or the airport. Accordingly, sellers benefitted from the difference in exchange rate and 10% of tax. However, if complying with the new regulations on sanction, the profit was not enough to pay for the penalty, so they were very worried.

Ms. H. U., living in Ha Dong, Hanoi, operated "hand-carried goods" from Japan said that, last time, because her family had relatives who often went on business, she asked them to carry goods to sell. However, due to the current high sanctioning regulations, H.U. would not continue operating due to the risks.

Opposite to the anxiety as mentioned above, some business households are "as calm as a toad in the sun". The reporter found that, due to the profits earning from this business, many establishments were willing to be sanctioned for operating.

Visiting a store specialising in selling business hand-carried cosmetics and supplementary foods advertised as originating from Australia on Vo Van Tan Street, District 3, HCM City, the salesperson named Tuyen said that she did not know about the new penalties related to this item. According to Tuyen, all cosmetics and supplementary foods at the store are brought back by family members who went to Australia and she sold these items without any problems in recent times.

At the old market on Ton That Dam Street, District 1, HCM City, it was not difficult to buy alcohol and hand-carried powdered milk. At a kiosk selling many imported milk products, the owner introduces customers all kinds of milk such as Meiji milk type 800g box, hand-carried from Japan for children under one-year-old, priced at VND 450,000/box, type 1-3 years old was VND 550,000/box which was cheaper than genuine products worth up to hundreds of thousands.

"Not much effective"?

According to a representative of the General Department of Market Management, the Decree 98 aimed to materialise the provisions in Decree 185 on sanctions in the field of trade and smuggling currently. Previously, when Decree 98 was not promulgated, the market management force sanctioned hand-carried goods due to no invoices and documents similar to handling contraband goods. The new decree provided more specifically on the level of sanctions to apply.

From the point of view of an economic expert, Nguyen Tri Hieu said this increase in sanctions would not have much effect on the control of the operation of trading "hand-carried goods". According to Hieu, with the profit from selling this product of large establishments, with a large quantity of goods sold, sometimes people were willing to trade it because the fine was only a part of the profit.

Also according to this expert, over the past time, competent forces have regularly inspected, but the number of detection and sanctioned cases was just the surface of the iceberg. In particular, "hand-carried goods" were sold mainly through online forms and e-commerce, so it was very difficult to detect and sanction.

“Accordingly, for small businesses establishment, it was possible to apply measures to increase the sanctioning level for administrative violations. However, for large business establishments, it would only affect a certain item, in addition to administrative measures, it should handle both criminal violations, so the effectiveness of prevention would be clear,” Hieu stated.

On the side of State management authorities, Nguyen Thanh Phong, Director of the Department of Food Safety, Ministry of Health said that according to the law, "hand-carried goods" were only for personal use, not for sale. The accounts online that sell hand-carried food from abroad without disclosing information to the authorities would be sanctioned due to law violations.

"In fact,’hand-carried goods’ have the characteristics of small quantity so it should be declared on the list of individual goods, not subject to tax and not subject to quality inspection like imported goods used for other purposes. The Department of Food Safety has recommended many times that people should not buy products propagated as ’hand-carried goods’ because these were products that have not been allowed to be traded in Vietnam," Phong said.

The Director of the Department of Food Safety said that with the regulation of high sanctions, it might partly make businesspeople "falter" and help consumers avoid the risk.

“If people use supplementary foods advertised as ’hand-carried goods’ when there was a problem with product quality, it was difficult for a competent authority like the Department of Food Safety to solve the problem because they could not trace the origin of the product due to unregistered,” Phong stated.

Besides that, according to a representative of the HCM City Market Management Department, it was necessary to have a synchronous solution, tighten the type of product group allowed to be carried, or depending on the type of product, it could reduce the number of products allowed to be carried. Tran Van Tung, Director of Market Management Department of Binh Duong Province, said that to manage "hand-carried goods" more effectively, it was necessary to prevent from the root. When the border was tightened on inspection, trading of smuggled goods and tax evasion would decrease sharply.