Fur coats that are spreading at the seams, branded things from which paint peels off, toxic, air-tight children's clothing, falling off soles on shoes are all counterfeit goods that are being transported to our country by the tons. Today, counterfeit products worth over $ 6 billion annually enter the Russian market. People pay a lot of money, but they get useless, and sometimes dangerous goods. Protection against counterfeit – marking. For fur, it has already been implemented. But, according to Rospotrebnadzor, 30% of fur products enter the market without identification marks.The Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade told about the imperfections of the anti-counterfeiting system in an interview for the Russian newspaper Viktor Yevtukhov.

"Labeling is just one of the tools to counter the illegal turnover of industrial products," the Deputy minister noted. This system is based on the principle of applying a unique control mark to the product. Thanks to this, his entire "life" can be traced from putting into circulation (production, import) to selling to the end consumer.

During the implementation of the pilot project on the labeling of natural fur products, work was organized to collect up-to-date information on violations of the law, including from representatives of industry associations and unions. According to the Prosecutor General's Office, 25 thousand violations were revealed, more than 83 thousand units of illegal goods were arrested. More than 7 thousand cases of administrative offenses and 53 criminal cases have been initiated. About 8 thousand persons have been brought to administrative and disciplinary responsibility. We were able to identify the weaknesses of the applied liability measures. In particular, the mechanism of destruction of light industry goods seized from illegal circulation does not fully work. This is a well-known topic, and the government is currently considering a package of bills prepared by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. There is a need for constant coordination of federal executive authorities in the development of the product labeling system. To do this, we have created a specialized working group.

Now the official statistics on the volume of illicit trafficking are available only in light industry. At the end of last year, Rosstat, the Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Federal Customs Service developed a methodology for calculating the share of illegally produced and imported light industry goods in retail turnover. Calculations have shown that the volume of illegal light industry goods in retail turnover in 2015 was 31.1%, that is, virtually every third product in the country is counterfeit.

According to experts, the illegal traffic in the Russian light industry by about 50-60% consists of "gray" and "black" imports from non-CIS countries, 25-30% of which are imported of the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), the remaining 15% is accounted for by unaccounted domestic production.

Source: "Rossiyskaya gazeta"

Photo: Ministry of Industry and Trade,shutterstock