Hanoi (VNA) -The General Department for Market Surveillance has recently set up a working teamon e-commerce to deal with the increasing number of trade violations online.

The department, under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said the amount ofbanned goods, counterfeit goods, goods that infringe intellectual propertyrights, goods of unknown origin and poor-quality goods on e-commerce websites“was alarming”.

It said that the illegal trading had affected the whole society and badly hurtconsumer confidence.

In 2019, market-watch teams found 2,213 violations when they checked 2,400cases. They handed out fines worth more than 57 billion VND (2.45 million USD)for those cases and to websites which operated and processed the trading ofviolating goods.

To better handle the violations, the department’s director issued Decision No.368/QĐ-TCQLTT on the establishment of the Working Team on E-commerce (Team 368)with the task of advising and assisting the director in e-commerce management.

According to the decision, Team 368 will inspect, control and urge compliancewith legal provisions on trade nationwide. It is also responsible forcoordinating the inspection and handling of cases or transferring documents toagencies and functional forces to handle cases and violations related toactivities of market management in e-commerce.

Under cooperation with the Department of Electronic Commerce and DigitalEconomy to supervise the online stalls which sell face masks and hand sanitiserproducts that help protect people from the Covid-19 epidemic, the departmentchecked 75,000 stalls on the e-commerce websites of Sendo.vn, Shopee.vn,Lazada.vn, Tiki.vn, chotot.com, vatgia.com, fado.vn.

By March 2, they found and removed 8,900 sellers offering 23,000 violatingproducts.

According to data released by German market research firm Statista, in 2019, Vietnam’se-commerce revenue reached more than 2.96 billion USD. The firm also estimatedthat the e-commerce this year could reach 3.385 billion USD. Vietnam was on thelist of the six most developed e-commerce countries.

Local data also showed that 85 percent of the Vietnamese population use theinternet, ranking 13th among the 20 countries with the highest proportion ofinternet users in the world last year./.