Philippines finds Turkey guilty of dumping flour, imposes punitive tariff

13/11/2014 12:00 - 490 Views

MANILA – The Philippines is slapping higher tariffs on Turkish flour for five years after ruling that Ankara had been dumping cheap flour in the country.

In a decision dated November 11, the Tariff Commission imposed anti-dumping duties of as much as 16.19 percent on Turkish flour. The additional tariff on shipments made by 17 Turkish exporters will be in place for five years.

In imposing the anti-dumping measure, the Commission said its investigation showed that “the threat of material injury to the domestic industry of such imports is imminent.”

Under Republic Act No. 8752 or the Anti-Dumping Act of 1999, dumping occurs whenever exports are priced lower than that prevailing in their country of origin. If proven, additional tariffs would be imposed on the shipments of the exporter.

The local industry represented by the Philippine Association of Flour Millers Inc (PAFMIL) had filed the petition for anti-dumping. PAFMIL groups the country’s biggest flour millers, namely General Milling Corp, Liberty Flour Mills, Philippine Flour Mills, Pilmico Foods Corp, RFM Corp, Universal Robina Corp and Wellington Flour Mills.

In a statement, PAFMIL said the Commission’s ruling upholds the Department of Agriculture’s (DA) earlier findings.

“PAFMIL believes that the dumping duty should be higher, but is thankful that a dumping duty is imposed as this allows a certain level of parity that was not available to local flour millers before,” the group said.

Last April, the DA decided to impose provisional duties until such time that the Commission would confirm the department’s preliminary findings.

According to its investigation, the DA said the price of flour in Turkey stood at $10.37 a metric ton, or way below the $138.97 cost of importing the same volume. The department also noted a surge in imports from 6.12 percent in 2010 to 11.79 percent two years later, with Turkish flour cornering 9.44 percent of the local market.

The DA had imposed provisional tariffs on top of the 7 percent regular duty slapped on Turkish flour, thus raising the import cost as follows:

• 35 percent on hard flour for bread;

• 39.26 percent on biscuit flour; and

• 35.21 percent on soft flour for pastries and cookies.

Source: Interaksyon