Never easy to control at the best of times, the smuggling of cigarettes, alcohol and electronic goods into Vietnam soars in the run-up to the Lunar New Year to meet a frenzied consumer demand.
Seizures of goods sneaked across Vietnam's long and porous borders have multiplied since December across the country, according to police.
"Our task is extremely difficult because the operations of the smugglers are becoming more and more sophisticated," said Le The Bao, director of the trade ministry's market management department.
"Smuggling causes very heavy losses to the state, and erodes the business environment."
The week-long Tet festival, the most important date in Vietnam's festival calendar, traditionally prompts a surge in the consumption of luxury foreign goods by people using the occasion as a means to show off their affluence.
Alcohol and cigarettes, usually hit with special import taxes of 200 percent, provide a lucrative market for smugglers.
Over the past few weeks, the state-controlled press has documented on a daily basis the arrests of people caught bringing contraband goods into the country ahead of Tet.
The methods of the smuggling gangs vary across the country.
Many networks working along the Vietnam-China border in the north, particularly in Lang Son province, a notorious smugglers' haven, rely on peasants transporting small quantities of contraband goods by motorbike.
Nearly 640 incidents of smuggling were uncovered in the province in December alone, according to local customs officials.
In central and south Vietnam, along the Lao and Cambodian borders, gangs use trucks to move their illegal cargo through remote areas under cover of darkness to avoid customs and police patrols.
Confrontations with the authorities are inevitable. In December, two border guards were wounded after being attacked by a group of 500 porters in Lang Son seeking to recover their confiscated cargo.
The smuggling phenomenon is exacerbated by an inadequately equipped customs force, widespread bureaucratic corruption and border officials willing to turn a blind eye for large sums of money to boost their meagre salaries.
The government has recently asked courts to hand down severe penalties to those involved in economic fraud, but the message is likely to fall on deaf ears among low-ranking customs officers manning their bamboo checkpoints.
Last week, police said they had arrested the director of Lang Son's customs department following their investigation into a massive smuggling gang that was broken up in June last year after operating unhindered for 10 years.
"It is a very difficult task to fight smuggling at the end of the Lunar year, during which domestic consumption rises from 25 to 40 percent," said Vuong Chi Dung of Hanoi's market management department.
However, analysts believe the seizures are a drop in the ocean compared to the real value of goods illegally brought into the country.
"Smugglers are everywhere in Vietnam and rule the roost," said one official in Ho Chi Minh City's tax department.
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