Kazakhstan launches mobile app to combat counterfeit and illegal alcohol sales

Kazakhstan launches mobile app to combat counterfeit and illegal alcohol sales
/ nitec.kz
By bne IntelliNews July 8, 2020

Kazakhstan has launched a mobile app to help the government crack down on the trade in counterfeit and illegal alcohol.

The new app, called e-Sapa, can be used to check the legality of alcoholic products by scanning a barcode on tax stamps bearing 2D datamatrix or PDF-417-stacked linear barcodes, or entering the data manually. The app then returns information on the name of the product and its manufacturer or delivers a warning if the code is invalid. 

Around 5,384 excisable alcoholic products sold in Kazakhstan were verified via the app.

The app was developed by the Kazakh National Information Technologies Agency (NITEC) in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance’s State Revenue Committee. 

The KazAlcoTabak industry association estimates that around 40% of alcohol sold in Kazakhstan is counterfeit or illegal, according to the National Chamber of Entrepreneurs of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

The e-Sapa platform for alcohol was developed after Kazakhstan began using a similar method in 2018 to monitor the fossil fuel sector, covering all stages from oil refineries to petrol stations. This approach helps track the volume of oil products entered into the supply chain.

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