Vittorio Tabacchi: "126 Milion of Sunglasses Come to Europe from Asia"
"The increased competitiveness of Italian companies on overseas markets calls for:
Tax reforms
Funds for overseas promotion
Strict domestic market controls
In the area of taxation, we hope the government will keep its commitments with regard to Dual Income Tax and a revised IRAP (Regional Tax on Productive Activities). We hope that, for small- and medium-sized companies, personnel costs can become deductible as soon as possible.
As regards overseas promotion, we agree with this new focus on a foreign policy that is more oriented at the needs of Italian-made production. In particular, we believe it is fundamental to give the go-ahead on the agreement between the government, regional authorities and local bodies. This has still not been implemented and involves creating a sole export authority.
The obstacle continues to be the size of companies and their ability at forming a critical mass on the market, and therefore to grow globally.
As far as controls on the domestic market are concerned, with continued and large-scale imports of non-compliant products from Asia, we once again strongly request the Ministry for Production Activities to constantly control and take concrete and continued action on the sale of non-compliant eyewear in Europe, and to fight against imitations ( a mounting problem over recent years).
Deputy Minister Adolfo Urso, is very responsive to this issue, and during a recent trip to China, invited the leading local authorities to ensure that companies comply with the control and quality standards of their products by honoring China's obligations after its accession to the WTO.
Recent studies on sunglasses by the European Commission are very clear: each year, Europe imports approx. 126 million pieces of sunglasses, even of a low quality (the average price is about 5 Euros) from Asia (China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), whereas Europe exports 50 million pieces of high quality eyewear.
About 18 million pairs of eyewear are sold in Italy each year, of these 8 million are high quality and about 10 million are low quality.
However, a careful look at import figures for the first semester of 2002 speaks for itself: the value of imports totaled €173 million with a 8.5% increase vs. the first semester of 2001: this was mostly for sunglasses (+18.4%) , most of which are from Asia for a total value of €85 million!
This phenomenon should be taken seriously as it may easily get out of hand as a result of the free circulation of goods in Europe and with China joining the WTO. Amongst other things, there are cases where free competition is being distorted with unequal import duties that favor the more competitive countries.
The government must implement a control system that offers effective and timely protection, and that can identify, withdraw from the market and destroy any non-compliant products.
The initiatives taken by Minister Marzano to better safeguard industrial property, by setting up special sections in court houses and through the reorganization of the Patent Office, were steps in the right direction which, however, cannot be implemented yet, pending the Parliament's approval.
Italian eyewear, whose 'plus' value is its quality, must continue to move in this direction, by focusing even more on innovation in technologies and products while also optimizing production costs."
