To make the market more transparent and secure.

Numerous counterfeit, smuggled, and substandard goods have been discovered recently. After each such incident, many people angrily condemn the suppliers and distributors as unscrupulous. That's understandable, but has the process been fair and complete?

The market doesn't operate unilaterally. Where there's demand, there's supply. Besides consumers who lack knowledge or have excessive trust, leading them to easily consume substandard goods, there are also many consumers who are proactive. They want to consume reputable branded goods but demand low prices. Some place too much faith in goods advertised as "imported" or "domestic" products, which are abundant in the market, without ever questioning why they are so easily accessible.

In other words, the careless and indiscriminate consumption habits of some consumers have facilitated the entry of many substandard and undervalued products into households. This consumption habit makes the market more complex and significantly increases the workload for regulatory authorities.

There have been many calls from authorities aimed at raising consumer awareness, such as "Be a smart consumer," and more recently, "Safe consumption in the new normal."

We appreciate the linguistic beauty in those consumer slogans, but we sense that consumer acceptance is very limited. As long as consumers enter the market with the mindset of simultaneously demanding all three elements: "delicious, nutritious, and cheap," they will certainly never achieve it. Our ancestors wisely summarized the market with the saying: "You get what you pay for." Consumers with such rigid expectations only create more opportunities for unscrupulous traders to exploit the market and sell counterfeit and substandard goods.

Every year, we have a peak month for protecting consumer rights, which is March, with March 15th designated by the Prime Minister as Vietnam Consumer Rights Day. In 2024, activities in response to Vietnam Consumer Rights Day will be concentrated in March – the peak month – and will continue throughout 2024 with the theme: “Transparent Information – Safe Consumption”. With this theme, the Ministry of Industry and Trade hopes to gradually make Vietnam Consumer Rights Day an important highlight in socio-economic life, supporting the business activities of legitimate production and trading enterprises; while ensuring the basic rights of consumers, especially the right to access information transparently and safely.

However, for this to become a reality, in addition to respecting and strictly adhering to regulations on transparency of information from suppliers, a higher requirement is consumer safety. Consumers must prioritize health safety, information safety, and legal safety when accessing goods. Personal consumption desires should not compromise market safety.

Lam Vu

Source: https://baothanhhoa.vn/kinh-te/de-thi-truong-tro-nen-nbsp-minh-bach-an-toan-hon/208646.htm