Counterfeiting officers told Indian industry about how online markets are the “source of counterfeit products”.
Business Standard reported on the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and its aim to seek “scrutiny” of online products and whether they are genuine, with the Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying Economy (CASCADE) – part of the FICCI – noting that online markets “are [the] source of counterfeit products” in many cases.
Noting that the genuine nature of products “has to be verified” if an online site wishes to sell them, Deep Chand, Advisor for CASCADE, told Indian media at a seminar entitled Curbing Counterfeiting and Smuggling – An Imperative for Indian Economy that online markets are the “source” of “distributing, smuggling and counterfeiting products”, adding that many suppliers “cannot deny that they do not have counterfeit products”.
Chand added that he stressed “enforcement of the regulations formulated to check counterfeiting and smuggling”, and that the enforcement of these is “not to the extent [that] it should be”, with the government in India needing to “set its priority so that the people […] counterfeiting […] are taken care of” by the authorities.
A FiCCI study of seven key Indian industry sectors, Socio-economic Impact of Counterfeiting, Smuggling and Tax Evasion, found that the estimated annual tax loss to the Indian government in 2012 to counterfeiting was Rs 26,190 crore ($4.2 billion/€3.4 billion), and estimated an annual sales loss to industry of around Rs one lakh crore ($16.1 billion/€13 billion) in future. The sectors included car components, alcohol, computer hardware, personal and packaged goods, mobile phones and tobacco, with packaged and personal goods seeing the most losses with 49.3 percent.
The Recycler reported in April that the global impact on printing from counterfeiting is now around $3 billion (€2.4 billion).