Govt asked to address interpretation issue of anti-dumping

NEW DELHI: In view of varying interpretations of anti-dumping rules by WTO member countries, apex chamber Ficci on Friday asked the government to take steps to address this issue during negotiations on the Anti-dumping Agreement (ADA). The member-countries have already agreed to negotiations on ADA as part of Doha Ministerial Declaration with an objective to clarify and improve disciplines while preserving the basic concepts. Suggesting improvement in WTO anti-dumping rules, FICCI said in a press release that there was also need for questioning the sampling methodoloy adopted by several members including European Commission and Canada while selecting the number of exporting producers for anti-dumping investigation. The chamber has urged the Government to address and effectively follow up these issues, some of which have already been taken up with and submitted to the Negotiating Group on Rules. The issues, on which Ficci sought clarification include sampling procedure, back-to-back investigation, concurrent imposition of anti-dumping and safeguard duty, practice of zeroing of dumping margins, level of profitability and definition of domestic industry. "Ficci feels that the imposition of anti-dumping measures shall be suspended as long as the safeguard measure is enforced," it said. With regard to profitability, the chamber said, an area of concern was the arbitrary selection of level of profitability while calculating the amount of duty necessary to eliminate the injury sustained by the domestic industry. "While calculating the amount of duty necessary to eliminate the injury, the European community used much higher level of profits than that actually earned by the domestic industry. This increases the amount of duty that is required to eliminate the injury," the Ficci statement added.