While Finance Minister P Chidambaram will probably continue to cut import tariffs to the promised Asean levels, the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA) argues that you need to look at Asean levels for each industry and not at aggregates. In their area, ACMA claims, current tariff levels are in some cases lower than Asean levels already. As with most other industries, ACMA too claims a 10-20 per cent disadvantage vis-a-vis countries like Thailand and China due to poor infrastructure and the resultant high costs here (as in the case of electricity, for instance). As for China, ACMA also claims there is huge dumping, pointing out that, for instance, you can't buy steel in China for the price at which full components are being supplied from there.
