For the past few decades, there has been an unprecedented rise of counterfeit automotive parts in the automotive industry. The trend not just jeopardizes the health of the consumers but also brings down the growth of the manufacturers. Of late, authorities from across the world have seized huge amount of counterfeit automotive parts at different stages of the supply chain.
A large amount of such counterfeit automotive parts, confiscated by officials, are from China. In the last few years, the trade of counterfeit auto parts has jolted the automotive manufacturers across the world.
According to a report by FICCI on Illicit Trade, “The Indian auto component industry suffered a loss of INR10501 crores in 2014 due to grey market which increased from INR 9198 crores in 2012.”
Market experts cite various reasons behind the growth of counterfeiting in the automotive industry which include, ease of manufacturing, packaging and import of products, higher margins on the sale of counterfeit automotive parts, uninformed customers buying counterfeit automotive parts, availability of technology to copy products, lower cost of duplicate product and short replacement cycle of some products.
Due to the above-mentioned reasons there has been an exponential growth in counterfeiting of automotive parts and has deeply troubled the automotive industry, government and last but not least consumers. Let’s discuss these impacts in detail:
Impact on manufactures: Automotive manufacturers have to bear the brunt of counterfeiting. The sale of counterfeit automotive parts brings down the sale of genuine products drastically. Moreover, there is a loss to the image of the manufacturers due to faulty and poor-quality cheap products.
Impact on government: The Indian government lost INR 3113 crores in the year 2014 compared to INR 2726 crores in the year 2012. The government suffers a huge amount of losses due to evasion of taxes by forgers or counterfeiters.
Impact on consumers: Did you know that 20% of traffic accidents are caused by counterfeit automotive parts? The figure was revealed by Automotive Component Manufacturers Association (ACMA) a few years ago. So the most diabolic impact of counterfeit automotive parts is that it plays with the life of consumers.
