May 19, 2016
India Imposes Anti-Dumping Duty On China's Iron And Steel Products

To protect India's domestic iron and steel foundries from the cheap imports from neighbouring China, the government has imposed an anti-dumping duty for six months on seamless tubes, steel pipes, among other imports from the country, reported the Press Trust of India. The iron and steel products are used extensively in oil and gas exploration projects in the country.

The anti-dumping duty is reported to hover between $961.33 and $1,610.67. The news agency said the payment would be in Indian currency.

Seamless tubes, pipes and hollow profiles of iron, alloy or non-alloy steel (other than cast iron and stainless steel), whether hot-finished, cold-drawn or cold-rolled, of an external diameter not exceeding 355.6 mm were the identified goods that now attract the anti-dumping duty.

Reuters reported early Wednesday morning that the U.S. had hiked up duty on Chinese cold-rolled steel imports by 522 percent.

Financial Times reported that the that U.S. had paved the way to raise duties on Chinese steel. It noted that the cold-rolled steel case was one of the three big anti-dumping cases lodged by its steel industry against China's steel imports.

The daily added that China's steel capacity surged more than 1 billion tonnes in the past decade, forcing the country to export on large scale as its own domestic consumption hit a ceiling in 2013. Though its political leadership regulates the sector's production limits, it is unwilling to see its large state-owned steel mills fail as they are mostly the biggest employers, taxpayers and borrowers in their locality, said the FT report.

Indian Seamless Metal Tubes Ltd (ISMT) and Maharashtra Seamless had in March 2016 moved the Directorate General for Anti-dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) for the duty imposition. In its preliminary findings, the DGAD said a provisional duty was required to offset dumping and the resultant injury to the business of domestic industry.

In general, anti dumping duty prohibits unfair trade practices such as dumping to reestablish an open and fair competition in the market. It attempts to eliminate injury to the domestic industry thereby maintaining the country's overall interest.

PTI said a levy of such anti-dumping duties would streamline the prices of the products downstream and will influence on the relative competitiveness of these products.

Source:International Business Times