Shrimp duty final hearing on July 24

The final hearing of the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) anti-dumping panel, crucial for domestic shrimp exporters, has been scheduled for July 24.

The Indian marine export industry, especially the shrimp sector, has high hopes after the three day-long preliminary hearing held in Geneva from June 6-8.

The Indian delegation had argued strongly against the duty and the customs bond requirement and pointed out that the US Department of Commerce (DoC) had violated the WTO principles in calculating the anti-dumping duty. A highly placed source from the marine export sector told Business Standard that the US delegation had hitched their arguments on the issue of no filing of Q&A questionnaire for the first administrative review by 17 exporters from India. Hence the DoC had imposed the exorbitant punitive duty of 82.30 per cent on these exporters.

But the Indian side put up a strong defence on the ground that most of the exporters on the list had ceased exports to the US. The total export of all these 17 exporters comes to below one per cent of the total Indian exports to the US market.

The recent decision of the DoC in favour of Ecuador has also raised Indian hopes high. The DoC had decided to eliminate the anti-dumping duty on frozen warm-water shrimp imported from Ecuador.

The DoC has issued a preliminary ruling in this regard and the final ruling is expected by August 20, 2007.

According to the ruling, the 3.58 per cent duty imposed on Ecuador will be revoked in the light of a WTO order to recalculate the duty rates. Experts are of the view that the WTO instruction in the case of Ecuador might strongly influence India's case.

The DoC had to recalculate the tariff because the method of calculating the duty, widely known as zeroing, violates the WTO norms. In the first administrative review, the DoC had raised the weighted average duty from 10.17 per cent to 10.54 per cent and also fixed a punitive rate of 82.30 per cent on 17 Indian exporters who had not responded to the review. The final rates according to the first review would be announced by August, 2007.

Along with India, Thailand had also complained to the WTO, and the meeting scheduled on July 24 would be crucial for these countries. Other countries like China, Vietnam and Brazil have also been hit by the anti-dumping duty.

India's exports to the US had dropped by 30.77 per cent, following imposition of the anti-dumping duty and the customs bond requirement, to 43,851 tonnes in 2006-07, and earnings dropped to Rs 1,350.47 crore, down by 20.50 per cent. The number of exporters had also dropped to 80 from 179 in 2001-02.