NEW DELHI: India is not willing to rest on its laurels after winning the battle against the US-amended Customs bond directive (CBD) that placed additional financial burden on shrimp exporters from the country, rendering them uncompetitive.

While the WTO panel had ruled the requirement by the US on India and Thailand to post bonds to cover full anti-dumping duties on imports of shrimp violated trade rules, India has decided to challenge the rulings of the panel which had inferred that the amended CBD was not inconsistent with the WTO anti-dumping agreement.

India wants to prove the anti-dumping agreement does not permit such duties at all in order to ensure the US does not undertake similar financial impositions under a different guise, an official said.

Speaking to ET, official sources said India had objections against not just the way the Customs bond was calculated, it wanted the additional Customs bonds in general should be ruled as violative of the anti-dumping agreement. “We want to ensure that similar duties are not imposed in future on the country’s exports,” an official said.

India, in its recent plea at the WTO, has challenged the panel’s conclusion that the anti-dumping agreement permits responses to dumping other than definitive duties, provisional measures and price undertakings.

It added the panel also erred in concluding that every application of the extended bond requirement (EBR) under the amended CBD would not necessarily constitute an impermissible specific action against dumping or subsidisation, as the case may be. “We want to fight out the case to the end,” the official added.

Anti-dumping duties on shrimps to the extent of 10% of the exported value were imposed by the US on exports from India, Brazil, Ecuador, Thailand, China and Vietnam in February 2005. The amended CBD was introduced soon after on exports from India and Thailand.

Under the directive, shrimp exporters from the identified countries faced the liability of furnishing continuous bonds for an amount covering the total estimated anti-dumping duties or countervailing duties on the value of imports of shrimps for the previous 12 months. This resulted in a crippling financial burden for exporters as, earlier, they had to post a bond equal to 10% of the duties, taxes and fees paid in the previous year.

Following disputes filed by Thailand and India against the calculation of the duties and the CBD, the WTO panel had ruled in February 2008 that the application of the bond to cover the full duties was inconsistent with anti-dumping rules, as was the US use of zeroing to calculate anti-dumping margins. The US, after a review, also brought down anti-dumping duties on shrimps from India to 1.16%.

6 May, 2008, 0400 hrs IST,Amiti Sen, TNN

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com