GENEVA — Viet Nam submitted documents to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in Geneva on Friday, challenging the US imposition of anti-dumping duties on frozen shrimp imported from Viet Nam.

The move is a next step in the WTO settlement process, after WTO director general Pascal Lamy constituted a three-member panel in late July at Viet Nam's request to consider the case and assist the WTO Dispute Settlement Body in making final rulings or recommendations.

Viet Nam and the US had held consultations back in March but failed to reach any consensus on the issues in controversy, necessitating the formation of the panel.

The key issue involved is the US practice of ‘zeroing' to determine dumping. Zeroing treats all non-dumped sales as having a dumping margin of zero rather than a negative, thereby preventing non-dumped sales from offsetting dumped sales in overall computations.

Zeroing has been proven to be an unfair practice and it violates the rules of the WTO.

After six months, the panel will present its final conclusions to the concerned parties and, three weeks later, inform all WTO member countries of the result. If the Dispute Settlement Body agrees, the panel's final conclusions will become the body's rulings or recommendations. The US first officially imposed anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese shrimp in February 2005, with levies ranging from about 4 per cent to more than 25 per cent. — VNS