NEW DELHI: Playing by the book, India has notified its decision to initiate investigations on the need to impose special import duties on hot-rolled steel, certain automobile parts, acrylic fibre and coated paper at the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
In separate papers submitted to WTO committee on safeguards, India has said that the domestic industry, in all four cases, has claimed that their exports have gone down because of surge in imports which has caused injury (losses and market disruption) to them.
WTO allows imposition of special duties (called safeguard duty) on imports, provided the affected country carries out a comprehensive investigation on the need to impose the duties by holding discussions with all affected parties.
We cannot carry out investigations on safeguards without keeping the WTO in the loop. This is to ensure that countries do not impose safeguards without firmly establishing that there has been an import surge which has led to disruption of the domestic market," a government official, who did not wish to be named, said.
Interestingly, an attempt was being made by the DG safeguards office to impose interim duties on the four products without consulting the user industry was rejected by the board on safeguards (a body of secretaries headed by the commerce secretary) on the ground that there was not enough evidence to show that the domestic industry was hurt due to increased imports. It gave the DG office two months to consult all parties, including the user industry, and come up with its report.
Source : The Economic Times