Friday 23 May 2003 Mobile Phones in Vietnam  | Mobile telephone companies have been pushing the government of Vietnam to drop taxes to help fight the huge trade in smuggled handsets. |
 Listen to the story The mobile phone companies argue that reducing taxes will make legally imported phones more attractive than the cheaper smuggled models. Consumers can save about forty dollars by buying what many call “a hand luggage phone” carried into the country tax free. They're often sold by the same shops which stock the legally imported models.
The telecoms ministry says that last year there were more than seven hundred thousand phones sold in Vietnam. Two thirds of them had been smuggled in. But Nokia, which sells some of the most popular phones, estimates that figure has jumped. Company officials say that even more smugglers have entered the market, since the principals of a major distributor, Doug Nam Associates, were prosecuted for a multi-million dollar tax fraud. Listen to the words imported when goods are brought from one country to your own smuggled when someone takes people or things illegally or secretly from one place to another tax free you do not have to pay any money on the goods that provide a country with public services stock the total amount of goods in a shop estimates an approximate calculation figure number the market the number of people who want to buy something distributor a person, company or organisation that that supplies goods or provisions to shops, businesses or countries fraud gaining money by deceit | |  | | | SEARCH IN LEARNING ENGLISH | | | |
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