Vietnam has been urged to crackdown on smuggling through airways and postal services, said Nguyen Phi Hung, head of the Vietnam Customs' Anti-Smuggling Investigation Department.

He said more highly valued products such as mobile phones, trendy clothes and shoes are being illegally trafficked via airports and international post offices.

Flight attendants and passengers were suspected to be making deals with smugglers, Hung said in a meeting co-organised by the Ministry of Public Security and the French Embassy in Vietnam on May 30.

Vietnam Customs dealt with 1,700 cases of smuggling between April 16 and May 15, including 441 cases via plane and 297 cases by sea.

Colonel Tran Duc Vinh, deputy head of the ministry's Economic Police Department, said 2,800 cases of manufacturing and trading counterfeit goods were discovered during 2004-12.

In 2012, more than 550 cases were reported, 30 percent higher than the average number in previous years, he said.

Inspectors said it is hard to distinguish fake and authentic goods because fakes are more sophisticated these days.

The shortage of tools to distinguish authentic and fake goods and shortcomings in regulations are blamed for the situation.

There are also difficulties in dealing with smuggled cases of medicine and wine because they relate to foreign countries.

The meeting called for regulations on anti-smuggling and counterfeit goods to be perfected and departments to cooperate in detecting smuggled and fake goods and violations of intellectual property right.-VNA