Baku, Azerbaijan, May 31
By Huseyn Veliyev - Trend:
Gaps in the legal regulation of Azerbaijan do not allow to effectively combat smuggling of smartphones, Jumshud Aliyev, the board member of the MiMobile (official distributor of Xiaomi products in Azerbaijan) told Trend.
According to Aliyev, the smuggled products mainly enter the market due to private consumers, who have the right to import hardware for personal use in amount of $1,000 once a month.
"The products are purchased in large quantities. Due to the fact that there are restrictions, the purchases are registered in the name of relatives, friends, which is not legal, as they're not paying taxes off profits they make on sales. A lot of people today are doing nothing but smuggling," Aliyev said.
He went on to add that for official sales channels it is quite difficult to compete with smuggled products in terms of price, as companies bear the costs of transportation of goods, payment of duties, taxes, wages to employees, rent of premises, etc.
"About 50 percent of the purchase price, official channels spend on transportation of goods. Due to the fact that private owners do not bear such costs, the imported smuggled product is about 40 percent cheaper than in the official shops. However, illegal products are not provided with a quality guarantee. There were cases when the same product could not fully work in operator networks due to the incompatibility of frequencies. Also, there have been cases of incompatibility of individual components, as well as defective devices. Of course, every buyer has the right to decide where to buy particular goods," Aliyev said.
