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SMUGGLING is rife in parts of commercial Harare, mainly what is known as “tuckshop land” with everything from organised gangs to ordinary people backpacking in bags of goods, or using canoes on Lake Kariba and the Zambezi River.
Along with smuggling, which is largely tax evasion by those refusing to pay customs duties, there is also counterfeiting, usually mislabelling or label substitution, so that a cheaper product is substituted for a more expensive product, with the counterfeiter pocketing the price difference.
But both smuggling and counterfeiting can create dangers as well as financial crime. Legal imports have to meet whatever standards are set and since these can vary from country to country, a product that is legal in one country might be illegal in another.
Counterfeiting can be generally more dangerous. Sometimes it is just switching labels, or containers, so a cheaper product is labelled as the more expensive brand or product, but often it can create dangers when a toxic or poisonous product is substituted for a safe product, or when something that is supposed to be healthy for a particular diet contains products that are dangerous for those who should avoid them, sugars for example in products meant for diabetics.
With Christmas coming up, we are likely to see a spurt in smuggling and in hidden product substitution, with a fairly large element in the trading community ready to profiteer by dealing with smugglers and counterfeiters, or even organising smuggling and counterfeiting.
The Consumer Protection Commission, that relatively new body that does have more effective teeth than the voluntary and semi-voluntary bodies it replaced, is now going beyond just investigating complaints and has become a lot more active in checking out retailers, especially those retailers whom it suspects could be less than honest.
It has found evidence of smuggling, repackaging and relabelling, and sometimes of combinations of these crimes, for example a fake product made in another country and smuggled across the border.
So as far as smuggling is concerned, this should be the easiest of crimes to hunt down and stop. Tax evasion is a serious crime in most countries, and Zimbabwe is no exception.
A problem that arises is that most smuggled goods are sold to the public in small shops, market stalls and even from the pavement. And there are tens of thousands of such retail outlets, very few of which sell large quantities of the smuggled goods. So there is that cost of enforcement, where the authorities, basically Zimra, can spend 10 times as much in investigations as will eventually be found in unpaid duties. Clearly the smuggling needs to be stopped at the borders, and a lot more work is being done in this regard.
Drones are now deployed along the Limpopo and there is growing co-operation between the South African and Zimbabwean authorities, although the complications of anti-smuggling law are that it is quite legal in any country to take goods to a border, and often not a crime in the country of origin to take them across a border.
The crime is normally on the other side, when goods come in without going through whatever customs systems are laid down, or are inspected to see if they meet the standards of the country they are being brought into.
This dichotomy in law can see law enforcement on one side of a border helplessly watching goods being smuggled into the other country and having no legal authority to interfere.
But arrangements could be made for a quick phone call, and similar calls when the smuggling is the other way. Cooperation in information is less hampered by legal powers. Quite a few of the gangs smuggle in both directions, so some joint action should be possible.
Whatever the circumstances, the place to catch smuggling is at borders, often because shipments are more concentrated there, before being split up into small parcels for selling at stalls and mini-shops, and secondly in that there is no argument when someone carries boxes of goods across a border away from a border post.
Consumers seeking a bargain are often quite willing to close their eyes to smuggling, although quite often they suffer since the retailer is taking the extra profit because they do not pay duty.
On counterfeit goods, or repacked goods with short weight, they can suffer as besides the dangers, they are not getting what they think they are paying for. Some consumers are almost begging to be cheated, and common sense should tell them that some products are never sold at the prices being offered.
You cannot, for example, buy genuine perfumes from an international house at the sort of prices some person with a few boxes in his pockets in a city centre doorway is soliciting. Obviously these are fakes, and not just fakes but potentially dangerous fakes, since no one knows what sort of chemicals have been mixed up to fill a bottle with a fake label.
More consumers should be willing to work with the Consumer Protection Commission by at least informing on sellers of smuggled and fake goods, and legal retailers should not be shy about unfair competition. Manufacturers or goods that are frequently faked, or which are modified after leaving the factory so, for example, a 2kg packet is a 1,5kg packet, should also be more active.
More cooperation between the enforcement agencies in Zimbabwe could help. The Consumer Protection Commission has noted that a high-proportion of the worst-offending tuckshops are owned by foreigners, which should be checked out by the Immigration Department. But for a start, some investigations need both commission and Zimra inspectors, and if an immigration inspector needs to come along, then the team is stronger.
More cooperation between law enforcement agencies, and members of the public ready to help, again by just sending a WhatsApp, and more help from producers and legal retailers should in the end help curb the menace of both smugglers and counterfeiters.
Online Reporter