Dumping curbs raising India's trade barriers

 These companies employ a simple ploy of moving the Centre to invoke anti-dumping duty on their products, which raises the effective rate of import duty on their products.

 Finance ministry officials said while there were many genuine complaints of dumping, because of the problems involved in getting data on the products from abroad, the government plays it safe and imposes additional duty in practically every case.

 Among the the frequent users of the mechanism are Steel Authority of India Ltd, Nicholas Piramal, GSFC, National Organics and Chemicals (Nocil) and Gujarat Alkalis.

 GSFC has moved petitions for investigating dumping in the case of three of its products: caprolactum, melanine and cyclo hexanone. While investigations have been ordered in the first two cases, the petition alleging dumping of cyclo hexanone is pending with the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Activities (DGAD) under the ministry of commerce.

 Similarly, Gujarat Alkalis has asked for protection of four of its products: methyle chloride, potassium carbonate, caustic soda and phosphoric acid. Nocil has got anti-dumping invoked against iso propylene alcohol and asyclic alcohols while Nicholas Piramal has asked for anti-dumping duty on vitamins.

 However, AK Gupta, who represents GSFC, Gujarat Alkalis and Nocil, said these companies had been not misusing the anti-dumping norms. He said duties had been imposed only in cases where there was sufficient evidence of dumping.