China is upset with India for initiating 18 anti-dumping investigations

21 November 2016

China is upset with India for initiating 18 anti-dumping investigations on imports from the country in 2016 so far. It has raised concerns about New Delhi’s recent anti-dumping practices at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and termed them “unreasonable”.

Anti-dumping investigations are carried out by a country if it suspects that imports are priced lower than their prices in the producing country. Penal duties, called anti-dumping duties, can be imposed on dumped items if it is further established that it was causing injury to domestic producers.

“By raking up the issue at the WTO, China is trying to put pressure on India to go slow on anti-dumping investigations against it. But India is not doing it by choice. Cheap Chinese goods are flooding the Indian market and the WTO allows every country to investigate and take action against imports if these are being dumped,” a government official said.

India’s trade deficit with China ballooned to $52 billion in 2015-16, which is almost half of the country’s total trade deficit. The deficit is increasing despite anti-dumping duties imposed on a wide variety of Chinese products.

In a recent meeting of the WTO committee on anti-dumping, Beijing’s representative said that it was particularly concerned about an Indian practice called “complete value chains”, where it asks all companies in an exporting chain — including both related and unrelated companies — to respond to questionnaires in an investigation.

China has said the practice of rejecting information supplied by the firms unless all companies in the exporting chain, including unrelated companies, reply to the questionnaire, was unreasonable.

“India’s representative at the WTO has said that the Commerce Ministry will examine China’s complaint and revert. India anyway mostly uses third country pricing data to determine normal value of Chinese goods while carrying out anti-dumping investigations as Chinese data is not reliable. But the situation may change soon and it may have to start accepting China’s numbers,” the official said.

According to China’s accession protocol, WTO members are allowed to use pricing data from third countries for anti-dumping investigations against the country till December 2016 by denying it the market economy status.

Although several members including the EU have opposed granting China market economy status from next year, New Delhi is holding discussions on how to deal with the situation if it has to start accepting Chinese pricing data.

India has imposed anti-dumping duties on 134 Chinese items between 1994 and 2014 of the total 535 cases of duty imposition in the period.

The 18 Chinese imports on which New Delhi has initiated anti-dumping investigations this year include textured tempered glass, coloured steel flat products, non-woven fabric, steel wire rod, naphthalene, sodium chlorate, pneumatic radial tyres, amoxicillin, hot-rolled and cold-rolled stainless steel flat products and castings for wind operated electricity generators/windmills.

Source – BL