The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has stepped into the promotional activities of the exploding number of bloggers in the country by coming up with guidelines to protect consumers against scams and unscrupulous bloggers.
DTI secretary Gregory L. Domingo, who met with over 30 bloggers recently, told reporters they are coming up with guidelines to govern the conduct of promotional activities of bloggers.
The DTI is the government agency that regulates and approves all promotional activities to guard against fraudulent advertising.
“Since this is a new area, we have to craft regulations,” Domingo said.
While the guidelines are being crafted carefully to ensure there is no loophole, Domingo said they are putting up ‘de minimis’ rules as an interim guideline.
This means that promotional activities involving a budget of P1 million a year and for corporate sponsorship of P200,000 may be exempted from registering with the DTI.
Domingo noted that if the mechanism is through raffle, say for instance T-shirts then that would not be a problem, but if it is random sampling there must be some regulations that should be followed.
During the consultation, bloggers, however, said they do not earn from their promotional activities.
Domingo, however, could not say if the move to regulate promotional activities being engaged by bloggers was a result of complaints by consumers except to say that it is about time to put some regulations because of the explosion of bloggers and their promo activities. “We are watching against fraudulent and undesirable activities involving promo activities,” Domingo said. (BCM)
SOURCE: http://www.mb.com.ph/node/330213/dti-
