13/07/2010
Capturing 8 millions of fake items in the Kingdom
41 billion riyals losses of fraud business in Saudi Arabia
Throughout the Monday workshop organized by Asharqia Chamber which dealt with some of the important topics dealing with private laboratories and commercial fraud and counterfeiting, on July 12, 2010 also insuring the importance of private investment in the examination and testing to support the country efforts in fighting against commercial fraud.
The group's working papers presented throughout the workshop, has emphasized on the need to speed up the system to activate private laboratories, and increase the power of these laboratories.
In his opening speech His Excellency General Manager of Saudi Customs, Mr.Saleh Al-Khelaiwy stressed on the importance of the private laboratories role, as a main assistant to the Customs to eliminate the commercial fraud.
Al-Khelaiwy said that customs is dealing with the private sector in terms of the partnership, and signed agreements with specialized companies, and trained the customs officers to help them on differentiate between the original products from fake ones, since the experience of the partnership has achieved good results, catching 8 million units of fake items during the first half of this year.
The Vice-Chairman of the Asharqia Board; Mr. Fahd bin Abdullah Al-Shurayie stressed on his speech on the importance of private laboratories.
He added: "If fighting against the commercial fraud and counterfeiting requires a lot of efforts and mechanisms that helps in facing towards this phenomenon, headed by updating the regulations, systems and economic laws, and stressing on the need to applying serious punishments and consequences for fraud crimes and counterfeiting, which requires the intensification and cooperation between different national authorities involved in this case and intensify its cooperation with major producers and global companies.
For his part, Manager of Governmental Technical Services in Exova Company Ahmed Al-Dedy explained in his working paper entitled: (testing, certification and inspection ... basic tools toward protecting against commercial fraud) clarifying that commercial fraud means any offense committed against the regulations and laws).
He mentioned the losses resulting from commercial fraud in the kingdom estimated more than 41 billion Saudi riyals, in addition to other individual losses, pointing out that some information stating that in every 6 thousand fatalities there are 3 thousands of them came as a result of using fake spare parts, brakes, coming into the Kingdom through customs entrance.
He also calls for reviewing for manufacturing process - called to and designing a quality management system according to the requirements of the ISO 9001 international standard and appropriate procurement specifications such as AQAP 2000.
Manager of Laboratory and measurement of the Saudi Specialized Laboratories (Mutabaqah) Eng. Khaliq Al-Qarni talked about (Laboratories role in fighting against commercial fraud
They reported that the losses of the Saudi market from the fake products amounted over more than 4 billion dollars annually.
As for Vice President of Consumer Protection Nasser Al-Towim who stressed the importance of private laboratories, which have a significant effect in solving the problem of accumulation of goods in the customs channel in the Kingdom.
For his part, Mohammed Al-Qahtani ,chamber commercial member of commercial committee explained that cheating even was shown in some materials in the proportions of other metals, which is costing heavy losses on gold traders therefore reflect negatively on the local economy.
After that, the Vice-President of the Chamber Mr.Fahd bin Abdullah Al-Shuraiyee gave an honorary trophy to the Director of Saudi Customs ,Mr. Saleh Al-Kheliawy ,also honoring the main sponsor of the workshop (Abdullatif Al-Nemr).
