Fight against smuggling of sugar fails to meet the actual situation

	An Giang Customs: No smuggling hotspots would exist in customs management areas
	Quang Tri: Preventing transportation of goods without legal invoices and documents
	An Giang: Smugglers still use former tricks

Director General of Customs Nguyen Van Can chaired the meeting. Photo: Nguyen Hue

Complicated developments

According to the 389 National Steering Committee, the smuggling and illegal cross-border transportation of sugar products is still a problem. Smuggled sugar to Vietnam mainly comes from Thailand, across Cambodia to the borders of Northwestern provinces for domestic consumption.

Smuggled sugar is concentrated in key areas such as Ho Chi Minh City, An Giang, Long An, Tay Ninh, Dong Thap, Quang Tri, Kien Giang and Binh Phuoc. The smuggling and illegal transportation of Thailand sugar in the key areas above is increasing with sophisticated tricks and methods. When discovered and arrested, smugglers fight against the competent forces and leave their goods and run away or send their teammates to monitor the competent forces. Some smugglers use bidding dossiers of legal sugar to legalize the smuggled sugar.

Deputy Head of standing office of the 389 National Steering Committee Truong Van Ba said one of the common tricks that sugar smugglers often use is production, extraction, mixture and packaging. After packing, smuggled sugar will turn into domestic sugar for consumption.

Ba said that some sugar smugglers bring packs printed in the country to foreign countries (normally Cambodia), thus smuggled sugar will be labeled ‘made in Vietnam’ and if they have not been discovered at the borders, it is very difficult to determine smuggled sugar or not when the sugar has been taken to the warehouse. According to the current law, when goods pass the borders and have a valid invoice, they become legal goods. Most competent authorities know about this problem but cannot solve it.

According to Deputy Chief of Staff of the Border Guard Command Tran Thai Son, the fight against sugar smuggling at the border faces many difficulties due to the fact that smugglers often divide sugar into small volumes, so that when they are discovered, the authorities only handle administrative violations because the smuggled volume is insufficient for prosecution, resulting in repeat transportation of smuggled sugar.

“According to the border economic agreement between Vietnam and Cambodia, when smugglers are arrested, they shall be sent to the host country and goods subject to Vietnam’s list of banned goods are can be circulated freely in Cambodia, so the handling is not effective. In addition, the lack of an agency in charge of smuggled sugar inspection is also a major obstacle to the work,” Son said.

Solutions

Chairing the meeting, Director General of the General Department of Customs, Member of the 389 National Steering Committee Nguyen Van Can, said at the preliminary and final meetings, especially the meeting with the Government, the 389 National Steering Committee assessed that in the fight against smuggling of sugar products, the competent forces and localities have been proactively preventing and fighting the smuggling at border gates to the domestic market with successful projects in key areas. However, the anti-smuggling work is still not commensurate with the reality, and sugar is still smuggled inland using different tricks and methods.

According to the Sugar Association, domestic demand for sugar is currently about 1.8 million tons per year. Through statistics on the amount of domestically produced sugar and imported sugar by official trade, imported sugar for exports, processed sugar, the amount of imported sugar is remarkable.

Analyzing the causes of the above problem, although the competent forces have also thoroughly prevented and arrested smuggling leaders and conspirators, sugar smuggling activities have not been restricted, with some leaders still committed to smuggling after being handled.

Proposing solutions to fight against smuggling of sugar products in the future, Truong Van Ba said that, besides continuing to thoroughly grasp and strictly implement the Directive , Resolutions, Plans, Official Letters, Telegrams of the Prime Minister, the 389 National Steering Committee on combating smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeit goods, competent forces should strengthen human resources, understand the situation of the other side of the border, methods and rules of gathering and transportation of sugar of smuggling leaders; arrange forces and means to supervise the trails and wharves on the border where smuggled sugar is often transported.

At the meeting, the representative of Quang Ngai Sugar Company said that the difficulty in anti-smuggling is the support of border residents in transportation. In the domestic market, many business households have encouraged smuggling of sugar. Therefore, along with telling border residents not to participate in transportation of smuggled sugar, it is necessary to enhance propaganda and mobilize business households not to consume smuggled sugar.

Explaining why there are six to seven anti-smuggling forces, but sugar smuggling remains is a problem, Deputy Director of Economic Police Department, Ministry of Public Security Pham Hong Thanh said that this is because the local forces have not strictly fought smuggling. In fact, local forces have only struggled with small trading and transportation activities but have not yet fought directly with the key suspects in the smuggling lines. Some local smuggling bosses are also supported. Therefore, one of the radical solutions to combat sugar smuggling is that the local forces must work together on a specialized project to stop professional smuggling lines and groups.

According to Nguyen Van Can, for the fight against smuggling of sugar products, the 389 National Steering Committee will have plans and specialized cases to handle responsibilities of each stage and level.

“Standing Deputy Prime Minister, Head of the 389 National Steering Committee 389 has directed that it needs to strictly handle and trace the path of smuggled goods to determine the responsibility of each force in smuggling control. The 389 National Steering Committee will actively implement the direction and strictly handle violations.

Southwest border: Smuggled sugar still "flows"

“In addition to the efforts of functional forces, it is necessary to have the role of local authorities in propaganda, education and job creation so that people do not assist the smugglers. In addition, to combat sugar smuggling, it is necessary to have the coordination of factories, enterprises and the Sugar Association. In fact, in some localities, there are still no less than 300 tons of smuggled sugar transported across the border every day, including a large amount of pre-packed sugar, which shows that many enterprises have not cooperated in the fight against smuggling, even abetting the smuggling activities," Can said.