Online Reporter
WHILE businesses do complain about regulations, hardly anyone makes a fuss about the need for all goods to be properly labelled, food products to be safe and free of toxins, and fall weights and other measures to be accurate.
Manufacturers are usually also keen on ensuring that what they sell under their own name is at least safe, and that their name is protected against those who want to cheat. This is part of the process of building up a brand, so that consumers recognise that someone has taken some trouble.
However, it is also obvious that there are a lot of people in business who are not convinced that fake products, toxic additions and short weight are that evil when it comes to making an extra dollar. So we have seen a proliferation in counterfeit and fake products, and of repackaging for short weight and to allow neutral additions that dilute the original product.
This sort of cheating is a far cry from those who go out of their way to avoid having their business licenced, who battle to avoid all taxes, and who generally try and get round a lot of administrative regulations.
Yet we do find honest businesspeople within that very grey sector who would never cheat on the products they sell, only on making themselves known to the authorities and regularising their business.
We also have formal businesses who decide to cheat by selling fake goods, mislabelling and selling goods that are past their sell-by dates, with the sale of expired products perhaps being the most common offence in the formal sector.
And of course we have those informal businesses that cheat on everything, from taxes to products, their only standard being a determination to profiteer at the expense of their customers, regardless of the risks they ask those customers to run.
The extent of the counterfeit, short weight and expired goods problems can be seen in the nationwide crackdown by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce over the last four months, with more then 86 000 items being confiscated as the Business Malpractices Taskforce got to work to protect consumers from fraud and safety and health risks.
The ministry, very sensibly, has separated its efforts to regularise and formalise the whole manufacturing, wholesale and retail sectors from its efforts to make sure that goods are properly labelled and are safe and healthy. Both battles are important but in different ways, although in the end it is easier to enforce safety rules in the formal sectors.
But the work of the Business Malpractices Taskforce goes right to the root of what governments must do to protect consumers.
The taskforce has found fake cooking oils, probably usually used products partially cleaned up and resold, drinks that are again often fakes put in genuine bottles retrieved from waste bins, fake baked beans, meat that has not been inspected and bulk foods like maize meal, rice and sugar that might well be mixed with extenders and in any case are sold for short measure and other problems.
We have also seen those after a quick dishonest dollar filling empty seed and fertiliser packs, or having new ones printed, with useless and fake goods and, by making a small price cut, conning some farmer into using something that simply will not produce the foods and crops we all need.
Many consumers these days do look at brand when buying, and even if they are willing to look at a new brand by a new manufacturer or distributor, like to look at the package and see where it is made and who is making it, largely to work out if it is a respectable manufacturer. This allows existing manufacturers to extend their ranges, and newcomers to enter the market with consumers having some assurance that they are dealing with an honest company.
There is nothing wrong with a new manufacturer or retailer entering the market, so long as they remember that honesty is not just the best policy, but the only policy that continues to produce sales and revenue year after year.
The fakes and repackaging that often take place behind the scenes destroy both the trust that manufacturers have built up with their brands and put the health and safety of consumers at risk, as well as dealing a body blow to the whole concept of trust within the market place.
Even before most goods were branded, people used to rely on trusting their local grocer or butcher, finding business people who would at least go the extra mile to ensure that what they sold was safe and that their scales were accurate.
In a fair number of cases, what are now branded goods started off with the name of an honest retailer on the pack.
Trust and honesty do have a value in the market place. The Industry and Commerce Ministry is not just enforcing the basic standards regulations, but is also trying to get this message across in all sectors, including the tuckshops and others in the informal sector.
Cheating on quality and safety is a whole different realm of crime from cheating on taxes and everyone in business needs to understand this.
The ministry needs to keep up the good work it is doing, and move forward to higher penalties for counterfeiting, short weight and the like.
At the same time it can be working through its other channels on regularising the informal sectors and working with formal sector businesses on combining and simplifying regulations to make doing business easier without any risk to consumers.
