Government Moves into High Gear to Protect Industry -Three
Anti-dumping Findings Released to Suffer Stiff Duties Soon
·
Met
Coke, Colour Coated Steel and Jute Products from Bangladesh and Nepal
·
Commerce
Ministry Releases Final Findings in Investigation, Customs Notifications to
Implementation to Follow
Met
Coke
·
Investigation
recommends final anti-dumping duties of $25.20/MT (China) and $16.29/MT
(Australia).
·
Step of
Provisional verification and data verification skipped
·
China
incidence works out 12.5% of import value, five percent protection in Budget
already available.
·
Protection
to Saurashtra Gujarat Units will hurt downstream
foundries.
·
“Low
Ash” used for making met coke not available in India.
·
Earlier
impost on China 2004-2009 period lapsed after failure of sunset review
·
Japan
Investigation terminated on request of domestic industries
[Ref:
Anti-dumping Final Findings Notification No. 14/9/2015-DGAD dated 20th
October 2016]
Views
of the interested parties with regard to the product under consideration are:
·
The PUC is incorrectly
identified and, if at all, it should be amended to only cover low ash Met Coke
with ash content less than 15%. There exists no reason to show why the PUC
should extend to Met Coke with ash content up to 18%
when on two earlier occasions the DGAD in the Final Findings concerning import
of Metallurgical Coke restricted the scope of the examination to Met Coke with ash content up to 15% only. It was also noted
that the input-out norms of DGFT suggest that ash content of 15% or less is the
appropriate indicator for identifying low ash Met Coke.
·
The PUC is incorrectly
defined and Met Coke containing low ash (upto 12.5%)
is to be excluded.
·
The PUC is incorrectly
defined and Met Coke containing low ash (upto 12.5%),
low phosphorous (up to 0.018%) and low sulphur (upto
0.65%) is to be excluded.
·
The PUC is incorrectly
defined and Met Coke containing low ash (upto 12%),
low moisture (upto 5%), low phosphorous (up to
0.035%) and low sulphur (upto 0.65%) is to be
excluded.
·
The lump coke used by
steel producing companies in their blast furnaces is to be excluded from the
scope of the PUC as this is not produced by the domestic industry.
·
The producers who are
captive users of Met coke cannot be legally excluded from the scope of the
domestic industry.
·
The producers who are
captive users of Met Coke cannot be excluded / included by cherry picking to
establish standing. No explanation has been provided as to why Jindal Stainless
Ltd. has been included as a supporting producer when Jindal Stainless Ltd. is
also a producer using PUC for captive use. It must also be noted that the
companies such as Nilanchal Ispat
Nigam Limited and Sathavahana Ispat
Ltd., which have substantial sales in the domestic market, have not been
included in the analysis.
·
The practice of putting
onus on the producer/manufacturer to complete the value chain by filling
exporter/trader responses is wrong. Whether the producer/manufacturer has
exported the subject goods through one exporter/trader or through several, and
if one of them denies to cooperate with DGAD, then the whole responses filed by
the producer/manufacturer and its exporters/traders are penalized by rejected
the data on the ground of value chain, which is again against DGAD law and
practice because there is no such written law globally which speaks so and here
it is being used as one of the anti-dumping mechanism tools to reject the
exporters/ traders filed data/Information.
·
The normal value for
market economy country cannot be constructed based on the cost of the
petitioners. The legal provisions at best provide for construction of the
normal value based on the cost of production in the domestic market of the
exporting country only. Therefore, the normal value as constructed for
Australia must be rejected.
·
Japan cannot be taken as
surrogate country as it is not the appropriate market economy third country
pursuant to Annexure I of the AD Rules as the normal value calculated based on
the domestic prices of the like product in Japan are likely to be much higher
than that of China due to devaluation of Yen. Coal imported by Japan from
Australia like India results in higher purchase cost due to freight cost and
high labour cost. It is further stated that the GDP per person in Japan is much
higher as compared to China and the plants in China are more advanced than the
plants in Japan.
·
No
basis has been provided for calculation of the normal value. The constructed
normal value for Australia is much higher than the international prevailing
prices of the PUC.
[Click
here for full text of Final Findings]
Coated Steel
Provisional Anti-dumping Duty of $849 per tonne on
Colour Coated Steel from China and EU
[Ref: Anti-dumping Final Findings Notification No. No.14/28/2016-DGAD dated 20th October
2016]
Items
Covered: Pre-painted, painted, colour
coated or organic coated flat steels in coils or not in coils whether or not
with metallic coated substrate of zinc, aluminium-zinc
or any other substrate coating
·
Twin
Complainant Essar Steel and JSW Steel Coated Products
·
Indian
Companies Arcelor Mittal and Tata Corus found dumping
in Home country, Thyssen the Steel Giant also named
·
Injury
margins into EU case go up to 60% while China injury margin only 30%
The
domestic industry has already received multiple protection in violation of the
WTO Agreements:
·
Increase of customs duty
·
Minimum import price
·
Anti-dumping
investigations on other steel products
[Click here for full text of
Final Findings]
Jute Products
· India
slapped anti-dumping duty on LDC countries of South Asia namely, Bangladesh and
Nepal on IJMA (Indian Jute Mill Association) Complaints
· India-Bangladesh
and India-Nepal relation based on Free and Open Trade at Zero Duty affected
substantially.
· 10-20
percent dumping margin claimed.
· Complex
duty structure with rate varying from Nil to $20 -$102 per tonne slapped on
jute yarn with default of $97.19 per tonne
· Hessian
fabrics $351.72 per tonne; Sacking bag $138.97 per tonne
· Nepal
Duties in the region of $8.18 to $38.90 depending upon the item
· More
than 200 Bangladesh companies and 38 from Nepal named
· Entire
value chain starting from yarn, fabrics and sacking covered in impost
· Normal
value constructed as domestic price of Jute products in Bangladesh not
available! (Bangladesh is the largest producer of the Jute products in the
world)
· Step
of Preliminary findings and verification of data dropped, Incomplete and biased
investigation alleged
· Shift
to non-environment friendly plastic bags expected with price rise in Jute
products
[Ref: Anti-dumping Final Findings Notification No. No. 14/19/2015-DGAD dated 20th October
2016]
·
There is no evidence or
name of the nineteen companies that shut down as a result of imports.
·
Most of the petitioners
are importers and therefore they do not have standing. Market intelligence
provides that except Hukumchand Jute Mills, Naihati Jute Mills Co. Ltd, Bowreah
Jute Mills Private Ltd, Murlidhar Ratanlal
Exports Limited (Unit: India Jute Mills) and Murlidhar
Ratanlal Exports Limited (Unit: Hastings Jute Mills)
all others are importers.
·
Petitioners have
erroneously mentioned that only Gloster and Budge
Budge have imported. The standing should be reanalyzed
after removing these two companies.
·
The volume of imports of
the petitioners and their share in production should also be disclosed.
·
36% does not constitute
major proportion as per Rule 2(b).
·
The petitioners have done
cherry picking as only 15 companies have been chosen where there are 91 mills
and 31 members from the petitioning association.
·
Supporters should be
distinguished from petitioners while determining major proportion of
production.
·
More than 10 petitioner
companies directly imported PUC from Bangladesh and petitioner has itself
admitted to imports by two companies.
·
The petitioner does not
have standing and total production of 36% disqualifies them to be an industry
as per AD rule of WTO.
·
As per Article 11(a) of
SAFTA, constructive remedies refer specifically to consultations and
undertakings. Consultations were conducted and there were no requests of price
undertaking by the subject country and therefore it can’t be looked into.
·
The petitioners have not
separately provided data related to market share, domestic sales, and imports
volumes of three product categories.
·
Any shock on export
performance of Jute sector in Bangladesh will have a deteriorating effect on
employment situation.
·
As per Article 11(a) of
SAFTA, constructive remedies should be looked into.
·
The balance of trade is
heavily inclined in favour of India and imposition of antidumping duties will
worsen the situation.
·
The trade gap situation
will worsen as Indian imports are much more than Bangladesh imports.
·
Bangladesh had promptly
lifted a temporary ban on export of jute products on friendly concerns raised
by India. This should be reciprocated.
·
To ensure undue profit
margin, Indian mills are importing Bangladeshi Low Quality Raw Jute in Huge
Quantity which is being used to produce sacking. Therefore, imports are helping
Indian Jute Mills.
·
Jute
is a common heritage of India and Bangladesh and imposition of antidumping
duties will impede growth of this industry.