Ho Chi Minh City: Many violations in e-commerce business

Ho Chi Minh City Market Surveillance Force inspected and punished a violating sales website in early August 2024.

Penalties for many violations

As a city with rapidly growing e-commerce activities in both quantity and scale, Ho Chi Minh City is a locality with a dynamic, flexible, and creative business environment, attracting many organizations and individuals to participate. The form of selling goods through e-commerce has developed in recent times to meet the trend and progress of humanity, and is an economic development sector with high social significance. However, many subjects have taken advantage of this form to trade smuggled goods, violating goods, etc.

In early August 2024, the Market Surveillance Department of Ho Chi Minh City issued a decision to fine Company F. (located in Vinh Loc A commune, Binh Chanh district, Ho Chi Minh City) VND 32 million for trading in goods of unknown origin, which are food, and trading goods that are past the expiration date stated on the product label, and forcing the destruction of violating goods.

Previously, through monitoring sales on the internet, Market Surveillance Team No. 15 inspected Company F. on Quach Dieu Street, Vinh Loc A Commune, Binh Chanh District, Ho Chi Minh City and discovered and temporarily detained food products including 600 boxes of green tea bags, without: brand names, invoices, certificates, accompanying quality documents, unknown origin, etc; the products did not show the origin of the goods, and were past the expiration date stated on the product label.

In the first 7 months of 2024, the Ho Chi Minh City Market Surveillance Force inspected and handled over 1,400 violations, temporarily seizing 16,669 units of gold jewelry, medical equipment, food, footwear, electronic cigarettes, cosmetics, electrical equipment, etc with a total value of over 4.3 billion VND. The total amount collected for the state budget is nearly 70 billion VND.

From the beginning of the year to the end of July 2024, Market Surveillance Units in Ho Chi Minh City have detected, inspected and handled 15 violations of acts such as: trading in smuggled goods; trading in goods of unknown origin, not notifying the e-commerce website or sales application to the competent state management agency as prescribed, etc temporarily detained 498 units of gold jewelry, clothing, food, cosmetics. These are cases of organizations and individuals doing online business on e-commerce websites, e-commerce trading exchange, social networks.

Most recently, on August 9, Market Surveillance Team No. 12 under Ho Chi Minh City Market Surveillance Department coordinated with local authorities to inspect a business household on Quang Trung Street, Ward 11, Go Vap District, which combined online sales. Here, the Inspection Team discovered 922 units of goods that were not labeled according to regulations, the goods had trademarks printed directly on the products, could not be peeled off or disassembled, and had not been used. The goods were mainly perfumes, handbags, wallets, belts, watches, chargers, phone cases, mobile phone headsets, water flossers, handheld muscle massagers and massage pillows with signs of counterfeiting foreign brands.

Most recently, on August 13, Ho Chi Minh City Market Surveillance Department inspected, discovered and fined a total of VND 50 million for the websites www.ruousaigon.com.vn and https://worldfishing.vn/ for violating the field of e-commerce.

Propose many solutions

It can be seen that the effectiveness of e-commerce has been affirmed in recent times. With its convenience and speed, e-commerce has been developing strongly and gradually becoming a key business trend chosen by many individuals and organizations. However, the e-commerce environment also has many potential risks. The fight against counterfeit goods, fake goods, goods of unknown origin, etc on e-commerce platforms has become a huge challenge for authorities.

At the recent conference to review the first 6 months of 2024 and deploy tasks for the last 6 months of the year of the Steering Committee 389 of Ho Chi Minh City, Vice Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Van Dung, Head of Steering Committee 389 of Ho Chi Minh City pointed out a number of methods and tricks of smugglers and commercial fraudsters in the field of e-commerce. For example, subjects hide goods right at their residence or rent apartments, both as a residence and as a gathering and transit point for goods. These areas often have high security and confidentiality, making it difficult to approach and investigate, making it difficult to detect, inspect and handle violations, etc.

Based on the above reality, Vice Chairman Nguyen Van Dung proposed implementing a number of solutions to make the fight against smuggling, trade fraud and counterfeit goods in the e-commerce environment more and more effective. In particular, strengthening close coordination between functional forces, specialized inspectors, strengthening inspection and handling in the field of e-commerce; strengthening coordination, review, exchange and provision of information between relevant units to conduct inspections and checks on subjects taking advantage of e-commerce to trade in counterfeit goods, goods of unknown origin and goods that infringe intellectual property rights. At the same time, it is necessary to focus on propaganda and guidance to help individuals and organizations operating in e-commerce activities to correctly and fully understand and proactively fulfill their obligations to declare and pay taxes. Provide training in skills of screening and analyzing images through data of arrested violations, and develop a handbook to guide the steps in the process of organizing the arrest of administrative violations and drug violations.