Public policy, strong enforcement needed to address counterfeiting, smuggling: Rajya Sabha MP

New Delhi [India], November 27 : The parallel economy in counterfeiting and smuggling has to be addressed if India wants to achieve a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025 and aim to take it to USD 10 trillion by 2027, said Dr Amar Patnaik, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha.
"Measures such as public policy and strong enforcement are needed to address the problem of counterfeiting and smuggling," said Patnaik while elaborating on India's economic resurgence on Thursday.
He was speaking at a webinar on 'Communication, Coordination and Collaboration- Strengthening the fight against counterfeiting and smuggling' organised by FICCI's Committee Against Smuggling and Counterfeiting Activities Destroying the Economy (CASCADE).
Anil Rajput, Chair, FICCI CASCADE said despite several measures taken by all stakeholders to contain smuggling and counterfeiting, further steps are required, both in the form of policy intervention and awareness generation to address this socio-economic scourge.
"Establishing a coordinated national strategy to share intelligence, best practices and cooperation on cross-border investigations is the need of the hour," he added.
While highlighting the need for all the stakeholders to work in sync to combat this menace, Deepankar Aron, Commissioner, GST (Appeals), Dehradun, Uttarakhand said, "Right data sharing with the right people at the right time is important in order to address the issue of smuggling and counterfeiting."
Further, on the enforcement scenario, Aron said, "In just one-year, fraudulent imports exports worth Rs 2,000 crore were detected leading to 200 arrests on white-collar crimes by the DRI, Eastern region."
The webinar brought together policymakers, think tanks, enforcement agencies, industry and consumer organisations to deliberate on industry issues in tackling the flow of counterfeit, smuggled and spurious products not only in the offline markets but on the online market space too.