Anti-dumping duties on Potassium Carbonate from Korea and Taiwan; China & EU spared

Aadhira Anandh | The Dollar Business

The anti-dumping investigation carried by the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping & Allied Duties on the sunset review of the matters relating to the import of potassium carbonate, have resulted in the central government continuing to impose definitive anti-dumping duties on potassium carbonate (subject goods). A Ministry of Commerce notification said that the petition was filed by Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Limited (GACL) in June 2009. GACL is one of the major producers of potassium carbonate for the Indian market and had filed this petition on the imports of potassium carbonate originating in or exported from the European Union, Korea RP, China PR and Taiwan. The results came out in such a way saying that duties imposed shall, unless revoked earlier, cease to have effect on the expiry of five years from the date of such imposition. The cessation of the anti-dumping duty is likely to lead to the continuation or recurrence of dumping and injury. In the investigation carried on China, it was considered as the non-market economy and therefore the authorities have determined their normal value on the basis of other reasonable methods. The authorities arrived at the dumping margin by the normal values determined at the ex-factory level compared with the respective net-export prices. The dumping margin determined for the imports from Korea RP and the Taiwan are significantly above de-minimis. However, due to this petition, the import from these countries have considerably reduced to a larger extent and the domestic market has been doing very well. The performance of the same have increased in terms of production sales, capacity utilization and market share has deteriorated; however, profits, cash profits and ROI shows improvement over the injury period. The notification said that it has also come to notice that the subject goods from Taiwan are entering in to Indian Market at the dumped prices in the POI with a substantial dumping margin. Price undercutting and price underselling are also negative without the anti-dumping duties from China and EU. In order to remove the likely injury to the market, the authorities have decided to continue definitive anti-dumping duty on all import of the subject goods from Korea and Taiwan. There have also been allegations that the review investigation that the domestic industries have provided wrong and incomplete information that are not based on facts but on hypothetical assumptions. Harish Shriyan, General Manager of Bio- Chemicals and Synthetic products said, “The domestic industries face higher overhead and other costs. So even if there is availability in the market, the product is largely bought from the imported goods as the cost is much lesser than the domestic market.” The cost of sales in the domestic market have increased by 31% whereas during the same period the sale realization has increased by 74%. However Harish also added that, “There are many companies who import from Russia too. In that case, these investigations or the outcomes out of it does not make a big difference.”    

June 10, 2015 | 8:36 pm IST.