JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Sunday, July 6, 2025

Govt moves to crackdown on counterfeit branding

by

Gail Alexander
1636 days ago
20210112
Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon.

Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon.

A crack­down is com­ing on the il­lic­it trade in­volv­ing coun­ter­feit brand­ing and where there’s sale of items in­clud­ing al­co­hol, to­bac­co and clean­ing agents.

Work on this area has al­so in­clud­ed re­search done and con­tin­u­ing, on sources of coun­ter­feit TT mon­ey.

This was re­vealed by Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate re­ply­ing to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s queries.

Mark not­ed re­ports of an il­lic­it trade in­volv­ing coun­ter­feit brand­ing which is neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing T&T’s rev­enue stream and glob­al trade.

Gopee- Scoon said a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey has been lost to this sec­tor, but she didn’t have the fig­ure at hand.

She added that a few raids have been done to tack­le the prob­lem but much more has to be done.

Gopee-Scoon said, “Il­lic­it trade is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non and Gov­ern­ment is aware of the im­pact of such ac­tiv­i­ty which not on­ly re­sults in the loss of tax rev­enue, but al­so un­der­mines le­git­i­mate lo­cal busi­ness­es and ex­pos­es con­sumers to po­ten­tial health risks from sub-stan­dard prod­ucts.

As such, the Gov­ern­ment in re­cent­ly out­lined pol­i­cy has iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing broad mea­sures for ac­tion, to as­sist with com­bat­ing il­lic­it trade lo­cal­ly.”

Mea­sures com­prise

* Task­ing the re­spec­tive min­istries and bor­der agen­cies to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to in­crease sur­veil­lance of re­tail op­er­a­tions to seize il­le­gal prod­ucts and re­strict the im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal com­modi­ties;

* Fa­cil­i­tat­ing con­sumer ed­u­ca­tion on the re­spon­si­ble con­sump­tion of prod­ucts;

* En­forc­ing ap­pro­pri­ate na­tion­al stan­dards for af­fect­ed prod­ucts.

Gopee-Scoon added, “Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Min­istry is spear­head­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to com­bat il­lic­it trade. The ap­proach en­tails de­vel­op­ing an ac­tion plan, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with key trade-re­lat­ed agen­cies and the pri­vate sec­tor.”

“ It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that this col­lab­o­ra­tive pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship will de­vel­op rec­om­men­da­tions to ad­dress il­lic­it trade in T&T. The min­istry has al­ready be­gun con­sul­ta­tions and is re­ceiv­ing over­whelm­ing sup­port from the pri­vate sec­tor for the ini­tia­tive.”

She said it’s ex­pect­ed the mea­sures pro­posed will not on­ly ad­dress il­lic­it trade broad­ly, but al­so tar­get those prod­ucts which are most fre­quent­ly trad­ed by il­lic­it means in T&T such as to­bac­co, al­co­hol and clean­ing agents.

“ A com­pre­hen­sive ac­tion plan will be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net in the sec­ond quar­ter of the fis­cal year 2020/2021 and would be ac­com­pa­nied by a ro­bust con­sumer ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign.

Oth­er on­go­ing ini­tia­tives which will sup­port Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to com­bat il­lic­it trade in­clude:

* In­tro­duc­tion of a new Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and Em­pow­er­ment Act which will treat with sale of coun­ter­feit goods. The leg­is­la­tion will fa­cil­i­tate co­op­er­a­tion amongst the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Con­troller of the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice for en­force­ment of these pro­vi­sions to ad­dress claims of coun­ter­feit goods brought by con­sumers;

* On­go­ing con­sumer aware­ness cam­paigns by the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion geared to­wards iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of coun­ter­feit prod­ucts and their as­so­ci­at­ed risks.

* Con­tin­ued im­ple­men­ta­tion of the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion Agree­ment on Trade Fa­cil­i­ta­tion which will en­hance risk pro­fil­ing of car­go by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion; and

* Pub­lic-pri­vate en­gage­ment by T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, in­clud­ing es­tab­lish­ment of an Il­lic­it Trade Task Force in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Po­lice Ser­vice, Cus­toms/ Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Con­troller of the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice, to in­crease aware­ness and tack­le il­lic­it trade.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored