COUNTERFEIT goods captured by authorities in the first semester amounted to P8.8 billion, higher than 2017’s full-year total haul of P8.2 billion, according to the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL).
Agencies under the National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR) seized P8.8 billion of fake products in the first half of the year, IPOPHL reported on Thursday. This was a whopping 530-percent increase from the P1.4 billion record during the same period last year.
NCIPR figures credited the Philippine National Police with the lion’s share of the haul. It confiscated P6.3 billion of counterfeit goods from January to June, accounting for 72 percent.
The Bureau of Customs, on the other hand, captured P2 billion, or 24 percent, of the total haul. The National Bureau of Investigation seized P266 million, while the
Optical Media Board,P103 million, in the first half of the year.
Cigarettes and alcohol accounted for 78 percent of the confiscated goods, amounting to P6.8 billion. Fake pharmaceutical and personal-care products amounted to P1.2 billion; handbags and wallets, P450 million.
“With this substantial take, we are reasonably optimistic that our goal to surpass the record high of 2014 of P13 billion worth of fake and counterfeit products is within reach,” IPOPHL Director General Josephine R. Santiago said.
She added her agency and NCIPR are working double time to achieve this objective. Violations of intellectual-property rights, such as production and sale of counterfeits, result to industries getting injured and the government losing revenues, Santiago said.
“Surpassing the full-year, 2017 seizure is a matter of course given IPOPHL and NCIPR’s intensified campaign to curb the spread of fake goods since the beginning of the year. Any form of piracy is damaging not only to the local economy, but also to the industries we cultivate, as well as the investors with valuable intellectual property and the government which loses revenue with these fake goods,” Santiago explained.
Apart from economic losses, she warned of the health and safety risks counterfeits could bring to consumers. The trade of fake goods has also been proven to be the source of funds of organized crime groups, she stressed.
“Most important, reports have established that counterfeiting is used by organized criminal syndicates to fund their operations. With this P 8.8-billion seizure, we hope to make a dent on their sources of income and drive home the message to counterfeiters, dealers, and all those involved [in] pirated-goods trade that we continue to have a zero-tolerance policy on piracy and counterfeiting,” the IPOPHL chief added.