India has initiated 154 anti-dumping cases against imports from various countries and anti-dumping duty has been levied in 137 of these cases, director, anti-dumping and allied laws, ministry of commerce, M S Rao said.
Speaking at a seminar, he said 40 per cent of these cases are against China and 20 per cent against Taiwan. The others involved are South Korea, Singapore, USA, the European Union (EU), Japan and Russia. A majority of products in dispute are chemicals, petro-chemicals, textiles, pharmaceuticals, steel and consumer goods, he said.
Anti-dumping cases have been filed against India too. There are 84 such cases filed mainly by the EU (27), USA (15) and South Africa (12), he said. More than 2,000 anti-dumping cases exist in the world today, Mr. Rao said.
India filed its first anti-dumping case in 1992 but as numbers increased, a separate directorate general of anti-dumping and allied laws was created in 1998, Mr. Rao said.
Anti-dumping is one of the three instruments provided by the World Trade Organisation to check unfair trade practices. The other two are subsidies and countervailing measures and safeguards.
Anti-dumping is a remedial measure intended to give relief to domestic manufacturing industries from trade distortions arising out of price discrimination, Mr. Rao said. It comes into play when the export price of a product is lower than its selling price in its country of origin.
If such a product is available in the importing country at a price lower than that of a similar product manufactured by domestic industry, it becomes a case of dumping.
The remedy is to levy anti-dumping duty to the extent of neutralising the difference between the sale price in the local market and the landed cost of the product.
However, mere dumping is not
