Smuggled sugar poses threat to domestic industry
Minh Duc
By Minh Duc - The Saigon Times Daily
HANOI – Sugar inventories have amounted to hundreds of thousands of tons, but the domestic market is still awash with smuggled sugar as relevant authorities have failed to find out effective cures for the problem, heard an online meeting in Hanoi on Wednesday.
At the meeting “Removal of difficulties for Vietnamese sugar enterprises” organized by Industry and Trade newspaper on Wednesday, an agriculture official said sugar plants turned out a total of 1.51 million tons of sugar in the crop 2012-2013.
The agriculture ministry forecast sugar oversupply at more than 300,000 tons in the current crop, said Doan Xuan Hoa, deputy director of the Department of Processing and Trade for Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Products and Salt Production under the agriculture ministry.
Nguyen Thanh Long, chairman of the Vietnam Sugarcane and Sugar Association (VSSA), noted sugar inventories at VSSA member companies totaled up to 500,000 tons as of June while total sugar volume smuggled into Vietnam is 400,000-500,000 tons annually as estimated by VSSA.
How to contain sugar smuggling is a big question to many people at the meeting.
Market monitors have detained a combined 1,300 tons of sugar illicitly flown into the nation since 2010, with 200 tons in 2010, 331 tons in 2011, some 700 tons in 2012 and 362 tons detained in An Giang Province so far this year, said Do Thanh Lam, deputy director of the Market Monitoring Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
This amount as the tip of the huge iceberg indicates that smuggled sugar volume is on the rise, Lam said.
There are two types of the illicit trade, one via the country’s border areas and the other as temporary imports for re-exports, said Nguyen Do Kim from the General Department of Customs. But he said it is very difficult to deal with these illegal practices.
Kim said it is a tough job to fight the illegal activity as smugglers tend to sneakily store commodities in warehouses along the country’s border areas thanks to cooperation from their accomplices.
Đăng ký: VietNam News
RSS Feeds