Cigarette anti-smuggling effort strengthened

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This is the announcement of the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr. Truong Hoa Binh at the Conference on cigarette anti-smuggling in some key areas.

The Deputy Prime Minister asked the Ministers of Finance, Public Security, Defence, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and every Chairman of Provincial People’s Committees to strictly implement resolutions and directives of the Government on strengthening cigarette anti-smuggling .

Party committees, local authorities and steering committee 389 of provinces need to be aware of the key tasks, so they should be proactive, positive, and decisive in leadership to promote the strength of the whole political system in combating smuggling, commercial fraud, and counterfeiting, especially cigarette smuggling.

The Ministry of Finance has studied and issued mechanisms and policies to support localities and authorities of key areas at the border to combat smuggling. Hanoi and HCM City are the two largest consumption markets of smuggled cigarettes. Therefore, the Vietnam Tobacco Association has the responsibility to coordinate with local authorities in key areas to support and improve the living of citizens, which prevents them from participating in smuggling.

The Deputy Prime Minister asked the Ministry of Defense to direct the Border Guard forces to increase the number of patrols at the border areas and crossings to detect smuggling activities such as storage and transportation of smuggled cigarettes in a timely fashion; and take measures to control perpetrators regularly crossing the border areas for transportation of smuggled cigarettes. In addition, the Ministry of Defense should also direct Coast Guard forces to increase the number of patrols to detect perpetrators transporting smuggled cigarettes on the sea, especially in key areas.

The Ministry of Public Security should promote operations against smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeiting, especially smuggling of cigarettes; accelerate the investigation of cases of smuggling, commercial fraud and counterfeiting; and prosecute cigarette smuggling in a timely fashion.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade should be in collaboration with Ministries and relevant agencies to draft and submit to the Government a scheme to control tobacco in the retail market in order to establish orders and discipline in this field, contributing to cigarette anti-smuggling operations and prevention of effects of tobacco use.

The Vietnam Tobacco Association should actively coordinate with Ministries, branches, localities and functional forces in providing information on cigarette smuggling, improve the efficiency of the fight against smuggling, protect the production in the domestic market; and research types of cigarettes in line with consumer taste with reasonable prices.

The press and media agencies should publicize and popularize the fight against smuggling, commercial fraud, counterfeiting and smuggling of cigarettes, especially smuggled cigarettes harmful to the health of the community, criticize these violations and praise the organizations and individuals in operations against smuggling.

Regarding smuggled foreign cigarettes which have been seized, the Ministry of Finance will coordinate with the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Defense, and the Office of the Government to implement the re-export of illegally imported cigarettes on the basis of legal documents in accordance with the Framework Convention on tobacco control of the World Health Organization and report to the Prime Minister for consideration and decision in November 2016.

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The local authorities should continue to implement the policies of destruction of seized smuggled cigarettes. In the case where local authorities are eligible for re-export of illegally foreign cigarettes, they should actively build the scheme on this issue and report to the Prime Minister for consideration and decision. Specifically, local authorities should propose to the Prime Minister solutions to control smuggled cigarettes and prevent the amount of smuggled cigarettes from coming back to the domestic market and report to the Prime Minister in November 2016.