PNG has become literally a dumping ground for Asian factory off-cut products, cheap counterfeit products and pirated movie cds and DVDS.
And the PNG authorities do not have any teeth to bite. Or do they?
One just has to take a walk into any of the Asian shops in any part of PNG to see what I mean. Pirated DVDs, VCDs, CDs, factory off-cut products, imitations of brand name portable CDs players, MP3/MP4 players, perfumes, shoes, hand bags, clothes…what else can you think of that would not even enter the Australian or US market is been legitimately sold in the PNG market. And I tell you it’s a lucrative business indeed that is making these so called “investors” a lot of money.
In the last couple of years, warehouses having been opening up to the public in the Gordons Industrial area in Port Moresby and have become the address for service of Asian junk product importers.
Well I would not say all on the products look junkie. In fact the products seem to appear as if to be of good quality but on a closer inspection certain flaws can be found in the products. What you see could be an imitation of a brand name audio or video player, game play stations, perfumes, bags, shoes, slippers, sandals, pirated images of pop stars or sports stars printed on T-shirts, and the list goes on. Many of the products sold are factory off cuts – defective products that did not come out well in the assembly lines.
These warehouses are normally referred to by their allotment numbers or block numbers and not by a business name and within an allotment or block five to six different vendors, mostly Asian owned businesses, are selling their wares at wholesale prices to unsuspecting buyers and even buyers who are just plain ignorant. Some of the popular ones are “LOT 60”, “LOT 69” or “LOT 80”and more recently this year we have “BLOCK 1” at the Erima suburb. .
It is a striving business for the “investors” who are only out for a quick cash-in and even ordinary grass roots are buying in bulk and selling on the street at a mark up to make a meager profit - if they do sell anything they buy. In almost every corner in PNG, in every province and town there is at least one or more of these “investors” bringing these products and there is at least one ordinary citizen peddling their wares on the streets. It’s like these “investors” who are in different parts of the country are all importing from the same source, because all the products appear to be the same.
A chain of Asian retail shops at a well known Plaza in Boroko is a classic example of what I am talking about. Ori Lavi Haus used to boast retail shops selling quality products just a few years back. Today when you walk from one end of the ground floor to the other, all the retail shops are Asian and all are selling the same cheap Asian products. Most of the products are just cheap imitations and are of low quality with no warranty what so ever; and pirated CDs can be found in all these retail shops. In fact all the Asian shops in PNG are selling pirated CDs. If you buy any of the VCD’s from any of the Asian outlets in PNG you will note that they are all burnt on blank CD-Rs.
The latest kinds of pirated DVDs on the streets in PNG use compression technology to store more than 16 – 24 movies in one DVD. One common thing about these movies on the DVDs is the video and sound quality which not what you would expect compared to an authentic DVD movie and that’s because most of the movies on these DVDs and VCDs where recorded in cinemas overseas using a personal digital camcorder.
On the streets these DVDs are been sold for as low as PGK10 to PGK20 per DVD. It’s quite uncontrolled and if you happen to walk around the towns or cities in PNG, you can be sure to bump into a street vendor peddling these DVDs. Rumour has it that even blue movies are also been marketed this way. And it's the locals, ignorant as they are, who are driving the wheels of this “underground commerce” because they simply love to watch entertainment movies and they are getting it cheaply on the streets right here in PNG.
In just a short span of time, the PNG consumer market has been bombarded with all these cheap, counterfeit, and pirated products and the people behind this businesses are getting rich overnight on the ignorance of our locals who would not even care less of what is happening and it seems the respective PNG authorities are just powerless to do anything about it or even if they are doing anything at all it is not even deterring these “investors” from importing junk products that have no value, cheap imitations of brand name products, and pirated CDs and DVDs.
Labels: Intellectual Properties