Part 2: Vietnamese goods’ competitive ability promoted

According to experts, 70% of Vietnamese people formerly used foreign products. And the rate of Vietnamese people using Vietnamese goods has been raised to more than 60% after four year-implementation of the campaign “Vietnamese people give priority to using Vietnamese goods”. Many things need to be implemented so that Vietnamese goods are able to dominate the domestic market… 

Customers buying goods at Binh Duong-based Big C supermarket

Genuine and fake goods in a jumble

From the local people’s source of information, provincial Market Control Team No.8 in collaboration with provincial Police Agency’s Department PC46 and Thuan An town’s Police Agency made an inspection tour of Dinh Tan N.’s kiosk at Tuy An market in Thuan An town’s An Phu ward with a large amount of illegally imported products discovered, including 5,490 foreign packets, 1,524 bottles of various cooking oil…There were no legal documents about these goods presented by their owner. With guilty signs, the case was forwarded to Thuan An town for solution.

Also in An Phu ward, provincial Market Control Team No.8 and provincial Police Agency’s Department PC46 jointly inspected Phan Ngoc C.’s fertilizer production facility at his own house on September 20, 2013. The inspection result showed that this was a fertilizer production without business registration certificate. Hundreds of boxes of fertilizer were seized for solution by the local functional agencies.

After making an inspection tour of Binh Duong-based Big C supermarket on September  26, 2013, the local functional agencies also discovered that 218 Chinese undershirts at the supermarket were stuck with Vietnamese brand names. The local functional agencies imposed a total fine of VND20.9mln on the supermarket.

Along with domestically-made counterfeit goods, there is also a rampancy on fake foreign goods. This has arisen from fondness of “foreign goods” from a part of Vietnamese people. Tran Thanh Trong, General Director of Sang Ban Mai said: “Currently, there are any technical barriers to control over the quality of products, so there is a strong import about mechaelectric products with poor quality from China. Many Singaporean providers have recently bought electric generator sets from China with the C/O of “Assembled in Singapore” and then imported them to Vietnam with high price. This has caused damages to customers and created an unhealthy competitiveness for domestic products”.

A fair playground needed

Provincial Market Control Department and relevant agencies in the first nine months of 2013, inspected and found out 9,671 wrong cases. Among them, 4,820 were solved with total fine and value of seized goods amounting to VND291.8bln.

Along with the fight against counterfeit products, the province has paid attention to implementing a program on high-quality services development in order to create a modern trade-service infrastructure corresponding the local industrial development. As of June 2013, the whole province had 94 markets, 9 supermarkets and 7 plazas, contributing to well serving the local people’s demand for shopping and consumption.

Vo Van Cu, Director of provincial Department of Industry and Trade (DoIT) said that provincial DoIT has mapped out a plan to realize the Government’s Resolution No.01/NQ on key measures promoting socio-economic development and the Government’s Resolution No.02/NQ-CP on some measures removing difficulties for production and business, supporting the market and handling bad debts. Particularly, the province will focus on developing infrastructure facilities, especially trade ones. As planned, Binh Duong will strive to have 122 markets, 24 supermarkets and 37 plazas by 2020.  It is known that 90% of Vietnamese goods are now present at most markets and supermarkets in the province.

In a bid to promote Vietnamese goods in the current period, each customer needs to actively respond to the campaign of “Vietnamese people give priority to using Vietnamese goods”. Enterprises also need to generate hi-quality products with good competitiveness. With the above efforts plus the State’s measures to remove difficulties for production and business, it is believed that Vietnamese goods will dominate the domestic market.

Reported by Bao Anh-Translated by K.T