60 companies fined for sale of counterfeit goods – Watch

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60 companies fined for sale of counterfeit goods – Watch

8:00 CAT | 29 Apr 2019

Photo: TVM

The Mozambican government’s General Inspectorate of Economic Activities (INAE) in 2018 fined 60 companies for the sale of counterfeit goods.

According to the INAE general inspector, Rita Freitas, many of the counterfeit products come from Asian countries.

Speaking to reporters on Monday during a seminar on patents for sports goods, Freitas said the problem has continued into 2019, with 20 establishments fined so far. “The cases aren’t finished”, she said, “since after the fines, we have to submit the matter to the attorney-general’s office for the final outcome which, in principle, should be the destruction of the counterfeit goods”.

She regarded the situation as critical, and was sure that the Mozambican state was losing heavily from the inundation of the market by counterfeit goods, though she could not put a figure on this.

“For a long time, very little was done to combat counterfeiting”, she said. “So the trend has been towards ever larger quantities of counterfeit goods. If you walk through downtown Maputo, or even if you go into the districts, you can see that the sale of counterfeit goods is on the increase”.