HÀ NỘI — The industry and trade sector will ensure enough essential consumer goods to meet shopping needs and promote market surveillance to prevent goods smuggling ahead of the Tết holidays, an official has said.

Hoàng Anh Tuấn, deputy director of the Domestic Market Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT), said to avoid a shortage of essential goods, the MoIT plans to balance the supply and demand for consumer goods until this year-end and even to the Tết (Lunar New Year) in 2021.

The ministry plans to work with the industry and trade departments in all localities nationwide, associations, industries, and manufacturing and retail enterprises to follow supply, demand and prices of essential goods so it can promptly offer solutions to avoid goods shortages.

The ministry has asked departments and businesses to build market stabilisation programmes, especially in the period approaching Tết festival, and increase goods selling places in industrial zones and remote areas, Tuấn said.

Deputy director of the Hà Nội Department of Industry and Trade Trần Thị Phương Lan said her department will closely monitor the Hà Nội market to work out solutions on ensuring goods supply for the consumption before, during and after Tết.

Hà Nội authorities will also organise many events to stimulate demand on consumer goods, including a fair under the campaign for Vietnamese people using Vietnamese goods, 30 mobile sales trips, 12 Vietnamese goods fairs and other fairs for regional speciality goods, Lan said.

The capital will also work with other localities to diversify kinds and sources of consumer goods for the city's market, such as goods from Hà Giang, Sơn La, and Hòa Bình provinces.

A representative of the HCM City Department of Industry and Trade said until this end of the year, it will promote connections between banks and businesses to help firms to take soft loans to store essential goods due to higher demand around Tết.

In addition, it will organise trade promotion fairs to help businesses sign contracts to buy essential goods for reserves.

Meanwhile, director-general of the General Department for Market Surveillance Trần Hữu Linh said until the Lunar New Year in 2021, the market management force will continue to implement anti-smuggling programmes. It will focus on managing consumer products often in higher demand during Tết, such as cigarettes, cigars, alcohol, soft drinks, clothes, shoes and cosmetics products.

It will continue to work with agencies, associations and localities to inspect potential counterfeit goods, goods with unknown origin, and prices that are listed at markets, supermarkets and convenience stores, Linh said.

In the past nine months, the General Department for Market Surveillance handled nearly 65,000 cases of smuggling, counterfeiting and fraudulent goods, including 6,737 cases in September. — VNS