Dr Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha elaborating on India’s economic resurgence yesterday said that parallel economy in counterfeiting and smuggling has to be addressed if India wants to achieve a $ 5 trillion economy in 2025 and aim to take it to $ 10 trillion by 2027.
Addressing the webinar on ‘Communication, Coordination and Collaboration- Strengthening the fight against counterfeiting and smuggling’ organized by FICCI’s Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying the Economy (CASCADE), Dr Patnaik said, “Measures such as public policy and strong enforcement are needed to address the problem of counterfeiting and smuggling.”
Mr Anil Rajput, Chair, FICCI CASCADE said that despite several measures taken by all stakeholders to contain smuggling and counterfeiting, further steps are required, both in the form of policy intervention and awareness generation to address this socio-economic scourge. “Establishing a coordinated national strategy to share intelligence, best practices and cooperation on cross-border investigations is the need of the hour,” he added.
While highlighting the need for all the stakeholders to work in sync to combat this menace, Mr Deepankar Aron, Commissioner, GST (Appeals), Dehradun, Uttarakhand said, “Right data sharing with the right people at the right time is important in order to address the issue of smuggling and counterfeiting.”
Further, on the enforcement scenario, Mr Aron said, “In just one-year, fraudulent imports exports worth Rs 2000 crore were detected leading to 200 arrests on white-collar crimes by the DRI, Eastern region.”
FICCI CASCADE has been over the years conducting multi-stakeholder dialogues focusing on identifying opportunities for joint actions between governments, enforcement agencies, industry and consumer organizations to combat this menace. The webinar brought together policymakers, think tanks, enforcement agencies, industry, and consumer organizations to deliberate on industry issues in tackling the flow of counterfeit, smuggled, and spurious products not only in the offline markets but on the online market space too.
The webinar saw participation from the e-commerce giant, Amazon whose representative discussed measures that Amazon employs to check the proliferation of the issue and highlighted their innovative mechanisms and advanced technology solutions in blocking & tracing bad actors.
Discussions revolved around the collaborative role of government and industry in thwarting this menace such as the need for collaboration with customs through data sharing mechanisms and knowledge dissemination. Areas of concern in consumer safety and brand protection was also highlighted.
