The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has recently notified the imposition of Anti-dumping duty on five products made in China To protect the domestic producers from low priced imports which were detected as ‘dumps’ in the Indian market by the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR). Items range from specific flat-rolled aluminum products for solar modules, and silicon sealants used in the manufacture of solar photovoltaic modules to certain chemicals, including a component of the refrigerant hydrofluorocarbons. In almost all five products, the commerce ministry agency launched its anti-dumping investigation in September 2020 and reached its final conclusions about 12 months later. The CBIC’s imposition of an anti-dumping levy for five years on these Chinese products is based on the DGTR’s finding that their imports were ‘dumping’, causing damage to local producers, and a subsequent recommendation that a protective duty was necessary. . A measure approved by the World Trade Organization to protect a member country’s domestic industry from imports whose prices are below the prevailing levels in the exporting country’s domestic market, anti-dumping duties are one of India’s most widely used anti-dumping duties. Has become one of the trading weapons, especially against a flood of cheap Chinese imports. According to a reply in Parliament by Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, as of February 2020, India had implemented anti-dumping measures on 90 Chinese products, with 24 other China-specific anti-dumping investigations underway at the time.
However, the use of a specific trading measure, however necessary, raises questions. A reflective recourse to anti-dumping duty, especially if the domestic applicant is a large and relatively resilient manufacturer of the product, risks skewing market dynamics in favor of the Indian company, with both downstream industries, in the case of intermediate goods Is. And consumers are likely to face the consequences of less competition on final prices. Furthermore, efforts to narrow the large trade deficit with China by the levy’s targeted recourse have made little progress in addressing the widening gap as imports continue to largely outnumber India’s exports. The effectiveness of the measure to provide timely relief to small domestic manufacturers facing existential crisis due to suspected dumping has also been undermined in the past by the ‘expedited’ process, which lacks personnel with DGTR. Companies around the world are now trying to put their businesses at risk from over-reliance on China in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, with that country likely surpluses to more capacity and to produce goods for dumping overseas. is being used for. Indian policy makers have their work cut out to strengthen trade security in a timely manner.
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