China drags India to WTO for putting brakes on toy imports

NEW DELHI: China has dragged India to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a multilateral forum to help ease flow of trade and settle disputes, for restricting its toys imports from January this year, alleging it is a discriminatory move to protect domestic companies.

Chinese vice minister of commerce Zhong Shan is visiting New Delhi later this week to voice concern over import curbs placed by India on Chinese imports over the past few months, including the ban on toys.

India had banned Chinese toy imports for six months in January, but later allowed such imports provided they were accompanied by quality certificates from internationally recognised laboratories and agencies.

In its complaint to the WTO, China has alleged that India���s quality checks violate the condition of ���national treatment��� laid down under WTO���s trade rules as they did not apply to toys manufactured in India or imported from any other country.

In its submission to the WTO committee on technical barriers to trade, China pointed out that since the restrictions apply only to Chinese toys, it could be viewed as a general ban on and a discriminatory measure against Chinese toys.

This breached a series of fundamental principles embodied in the WTO agreement, including that of most favoured nation treatment (every member country will be treated on a par with other member countries), and national treatment (product from a member country will be given the same treatment as that given to a product made locally), along with provisions of technical barriers to trade (TBT) agreement.

China also pointed out that India did not inform WTO about the restrictions, a procedure necessary under the transparency obligations of TBT agreement.

���China strongly requests that India revoke its discriminatory and WTO-inconsistent restriction on Chinese toys immediately,��� the submission stated.

The ban has come as a relief to the domestic toy industry, which had been reeling under intense competition from China. Industry estimates say, Chinese toys have a 60% share of the total toys sold in India.

The Indian toy industry is worth Rs 2,500 crore, of which Rs 1,000 crore is in the organised sector and the rest is in the unorganised sector.