The demand for goods at the end of this year is increasing rapidly creating an excellent opportunity for business to boost production and marketing but it also allows counterfeit products to be sold alongside real quality ones.

Counterfeit goods are being sold not only in markets and retail shops but also in large department stores and supermarkets.

Recently, the Toan Thanh Company, which imports White Care body wash, found many counterfeit products on the selves of a number of supermarkets, shops and convenience stores. The SHTT Winco Company, the authorised distributor of the US Homeland Company for the Magic Bullet blender in Vietnam, discovered a number of the fake products in electronic shops in Ba Dinh district in Hanoi and 10^th district in Ho Chi Minh City.

A representative from a company that imports products from international fashion houses said that nearly 90 percent of luxury fashion items in Vietnam are not the real thing. Moreover, some popular Vietnamese brand names including Viet Thy, FOCI, Ninomaxx are also being counterfeited. As soon as they have released a new collection, fake copies are sold in the markets at half the price of the original ones.

Since the beginning this year, the Market Management Department has more than 11,000 cases of trading counterfeit goods. Worryingly, most of them are medicines, foods, cosmetics and cigarettes, which have a direct impact on consumers’ health.

Famous brand names are most likely to be faked and the time that it fakes the copies to appear in the market is eight times faster than before. Fake goods are produced in mass quantities especially in rural areas because of the low cost of labour.

Who should be blamed?

The authorities have said that the ways businesses combat counterfeit products are not effective enough. They do not show the customers how to distinguish between fake and real products and they are unlikely to cooperate with the authorities to combat counterfeiting. Some are not fully aware of the importance of registering their products, according to intellectual property rights, while some are even reluctant to do so.

Also, the fines for people for producing counterfeit products are not heavy enough and the country’s legal system is inadequate.

There is still controversial about quantity, which severely affects consumers, and results in problems investigating and handling cases of producing and selling counterfeit goods.

Moreover, the authorities must test the products before fining people. However, the cost of tests is very high and the authorities have to prepay for this, while the aggrieved individuals or organisations pay for this later. But they are not willing to comply with this and the authorities have no jurisdiction to force the aggrieved to pay costs of the tests.

Several businesses have accused the authorities that they are not enthusiastic enough in preventing and combating counterfeit goods. Even when they are asked work with businesses in these cases, it still takes a long time and a lot of paper work to carry out the process.

Consumers are also ignorant about combating counterfeit products. They are still slow to learn about the origin and quality of products and hesitate to report fake products to the authorities. This leads to counterfeit products dominating the market. Thus, consumers, authorities and businesses should work closer together to tackle the problem. However, this will take a lot of time and effort.