HP Assembly For Imposing Anti-Dumping Duty on Chinese Apples.

SHIMLA: The Himachal assembly unanimously adopted a private members bill that impresses upon the Union government to impose anti-dumping duty on apples being imported from China.

Moving the bill that was later adopted by the House, opposition member and senior Congress leader Kaul Singh Thakur said imported apple had become a threat to the economy of growers in the state.

He said that about 1.60 lakh farmers were dependent upon the fruit crop, though Congress legislators in their individual capacity had taken up the matter with the Centre, but a unanimous resolution of the state assembly would make the demand more effective.

The law maker sought constitution of an expert committee to make a case raising import duty on apples, and for getting the fruit declared a special category product that needed state intervention for being shielded from dumping by other countries.

Participating in the debate Kushi Ram Balnatah, a BJP member, while endorsing the demand, reminded the House that the NDA government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1999-2004 had raised import duty on apples and saved a large section of the hill farming community.

He said it was unfair to compare cost of productivity of European or other countries` apple with that of produced in Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir or Uttarakhand.

Whereas the fruit was grown on flat lands in these nations, in the Indian hill states, the Himalayan topography presented many challenges, which the farmers needed to overcome to have a sustainable livelihood out of the activity, he said.

Leader of the opposition Vidya Stokes said imports of apple was causing livelihood insecurity among the growers. Responding to the debate, horticulture minister Narinder Bragta said imports of Chinese apple was rising steadily since the year 2006. He said that in 2009-10 and 2010-11 apples worth Rs 500 crore in each year were imported.

Asking for rising above party lines, she said that the matter of declaring apple a special category product should be jointly taken up by all apple-growing states, which include J&K and Uttarakhand.

Provisions for imposing anti-dumping duty existed under WTO rules and the Centre needed to ask for restricting imports of the fruit and save the hill farmers from the unfair trade practices being resorted to.

Stokes claimed that the price of Chinese apple in Indian markets was Rs 39 per Kg, US apple was Rs 51 per Kg and New Zealand apple was Rs 57 per Kg.

The government had taken up the case for raising import duty on Chinese apple with Union commerce minister Anand Sharma and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar.

Source : timesofindia.indiatimes.com