After January 1, 2004 all mobile phones not carrying a stamp to prove that taxes and duties have been paid will be seized, said Chu Van Binh, a high-ranking official of the Vietnamese Ministry of Posts and Telecoms (MPT,) to a Thanh Nien newspaper reporter recently.

This is the second effort the country will make to fight widespread mobile phone smuggling. In late 2003, Vietnamese market management agencies (MMAs) demanded that every mobile phone shop in the country itemize all of the mobile phones they sold. However, the program was highly unsuccessful.

The idea of mobile phone stamps was first proposed by the MPT in a seminar hosted by Vietnams Steering Committee for the Prevention of Smuggling and Trade Fraud (Steering Committee 127) in Ho Chi Minh City in late July of this year.

Around 50 to 60 percent of mobile phones available on the domestic market are illegally smuggled products and almost all attempts to block smuggling have been useless, Steering Committee 127 said in the seminar.

The situation seems to have become worse in the last three months, according to market observers.

Companies conducting business legally are going under while smugglers are thriving, lamented an importer of Nokia cell phones in Ho Chi Minh City.

Therefore, the stamping scheme is expected to stop or at least shrink the illegal phone-smuggling business.

However, there are already doubts about the effectiveness of the stamp system as well. The situation might possibly not get better with the introduction of stamps, predicted some MMA leaders.

Others even said that the plan is to put a quart into a pint pot, and it will probably unsettle the mobile market rather than tackling smuggling.

Even mobile phone dealers seem to be quite indifferent to the phone-stamp plan, market observers said.