MOSCOW, December 20. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia’s Ministry of Industry and Trade intends to put radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips on labels of clothes and footwear in the territory of the Customs Union member states, the Izvestia newspaper writes on Friday. The ministry thus hopes to get rid of counterfeited products on the market.

Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Georgy Kalamanov told the newspaper that a similar system of fighting counterfeit is already successively applied on the market of pharmaceuticals. According to him, the system was developed by RST-Invent, a project company of Rusnano.

In the view of Kalamanov, all the Customs Union members (Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan) should adopt the system. “As the problem of light industry counterfeit is topical for all the Customs Union member states, it is necessary to develop and introduce a unified system of control of the goods turnover, including the control of legality of their import to all CU territories,” the deputy minister stressed.

The press service of the Common Economic Space (CES) confirmed that this issue had recently been discussed at a meeting of the Customs Union collegiums. This proposal has been sent to finalization so far.

The Russian Union of Entrepreneurs of Textile and Light Industry (Soyuzlegprom) said that the company had already presented the project of radiofrequency chip implanting to the union members and Customs Union representatives. The Rusnano subsidiary has demonstrated the electronic tag project that is developed in co-operation with the Belarusian Centre of Identification Systems.

However, the contractor has not yet been selected. There are only two companies in Russia that manufacture RFID chips: RST-Invent and Micron that produces chips for Moscow Metro tickets.

Clothing manufacturers believe that the electronic tags and devices to read them would cost too much and affect the price of goods.

The novelty would cost the state budget one trillion rubles — the same worth of counterfeit clothing and footwear is annually imported, according to Soyuzlegprom.

According to the Federal Customs Service (FCS), since 2007, Russia has exposed revealed 70 million units of counterfeit products, including in the first half of 2013 — 4.8 million units; in the first six months of this year, 5.6 million rubles worth of such products have been confiscated.

The main range of the exposed counterfeit is clothes, shoes and toys, the FCS said.