Anti-dumping Duty Final Findings on Solar Cells Lapses after FinMin No to Protect Consumers

Under pressure from power firms, the government has decided not to impose anti-dumping duty on solar cells imported from nations like the US and China as the move would have led to rise in equipment cost.

The Finance Ministry has not accepted the recommendations of Commerce Ministry on imposing the anti-dumping duty. This duty will hurt the users of solar power. It may be recalled that the Authority had recommended imposing a duty of USD 0.11-0.81 per watt on solar cells imported from the US, China, Malaysia and Chinese Taipei following the global bend to protect the solar cell producers from China dumping. The Indian Government has norms on local value addition for Government purchases.

The country’s current installed solar capacity exceeds 2,600 MW.

The turnaround is a first for India when the law of the land on anti-dumping has been reversed by an executive decision in “public interest” without an overt law provision (The Anti-dumping Rules should be amended to bring the public interest consideration into play to protect consumer interest – Ed.)

India aims to have 20,000 MW solar capacity by 2022. Thus India will be able to develop down stream products from low price China origin cells.

Ministers Nitin Gadkari and Piyush Goyal put pressure on the Finance Ministry to kill the findings of the DGAD.