The 24% of all the products seized in Europe for irregularities are made up of falsified medicines. Furthermore, the 36% of the seized postal parcels contains medicines (basically the small purchases made directly by the consumer). Data from the Indicam National Assembly, a center specialized in anti-counterfeiting.
27 SEP – There is not only tax evasion, but also counterfeiting among the factors responsible for the lack of economic growth in our country. And it gets worse and worse. In fact, the turnover of counterfeiters in Europe grew by 18% in 2011, but the risks for the consumer also grew more than proportionally, because products for daily use and products potentially harmful to the health and safety of consumers amounted to 28.6% of the seizures carried out in 2011, compared with 14.5% in 2010. An even more alarming situation if we consider that around 24% 3T of the seizures concerned medicines and that of the seized postal parcels (i.e. small purchases made directly by the consumer) around 36% were medicines.
These are the data presented yesterday by Indicam, the Centromarca Institute for the fight against counterfeiting, on the occasion of its Annual Assembly, a traditional moment of discussion between the various institutions that collaborate in the fight against counterfeiting and an opportunity for Indicam to also present a six-point proposal to make the anti-counterfeiting commitment credible in Italy and in Europe.
“Our Government is engaged in a very determined fight against tax evasion which damages the economy and citizens. And yet – said Carlo Guglielmi, president of Indicam – there is a phenomenon that is totally overlooked: counterfeiting knows no crisis, on the contrary, it seems to be counter-cyclical: thus, while we are discussing 1 or 2 points of VAT, counterfeiters evade all of it and damage businesses and their brands. The ultimate effect is a further drop in GDP and tax revenues”.
The most recent comparative data between 2010 and 2011, in fact, show that both at a European level (European Commission; DG TAXUD, July) and at a global level (WCO, September), counterfeiting continues to grow in parallel with the growth of globalization and internet commerce. And this while taking into account that in one case as in the other, we are dealing with inter-customs data, which therefore do not include the cont
