HANOI - General Statistics Office (GSO) General Director Nguyen Bich Lam has said that Vietnam has no specific regulations designed to fight trade fraud, and that the GSO will work with international statistics agencies to verify product origins in the future.

Trade fraud has become common, especially under the impacts of the ongoing China-U.S. trade war. A case in point is domestic electronics firm Asanzo Vietnam, which has been accused of importing products and electronic accessories from China and then attaching “Made in Vietnam” labels.

Meanwhile, the country has yet to issue specific regulations for dealing with such problems, particularly when it comes to importing goods for domestic assembly by Asanzo and other companies, the GSO head told a press briefing on June 28.

Apart from local firms, in reality, many foreign-invested firms in the processing and manufacturing industries imported goods for assembly in Vietnam and attached “Made in Vietnam” labels to their finished products, Lam said.

Such manufacturing practices can generate insignificant added value for Vietnam, as importers used imported items for final-stage assembly and then exported them to other countries, he said.

Amid escalating trade tensions between the world’s two largest economies, trade fraud, including country of origin fraud, can become more common, so GSO is working with relevant agencies to take measures to tackle similar trade fraud cases.

GSO has conducted a review and will ask the prime minister to take actions, or the U.S. will raise tariffs on imports from Vietnam, Lam explained.

Further, the statistics agency of the United Nations is working to provide accurate evaluations of products’ countries of origin, which were manufactured in one country and shipped to others. Meanwhile, the GSO is working with experts from this agency to soon work out solutions for handling trade fraud, according to Lam.