Vietnamese catfish firms file lawsuit against DOC

16/04/2013 12:00 - 425 Views

Some Vietnamese catfish exporters have lodged a lawsuit to the US Court of International Trade in protest against what they say is an unfair decision by the US Department of Commerce in determining the anti-dumping tariffs on their exports to the country.

The exporters are companies that are subject to new anti-dumping duties, which are as much as 25 times higher than the old rates, stipulated in the DOC’s 8th preliminary administrative review (POR) released last month, said Duong Ngoc Minh, deputy chairman of the Vietnamese Association of Seafood Exporters and Processors.

The lawsuit is mainly intended to protest the decision of DOC in choosing Indonesia as the reference country for calculating the dumping margin, instead of Bangladesh, as it did in the seven previous PORs, Minh said.

The exporters said it was unfair to choose Indonesia, a country which merely imported frozen catfish fillet from Vietnam, rather than growing and exporting the fish. Indonesia thus cannot provide adequate information on the appropriate selling price with the cost of production based on surrogate values, they said.

The case is expected to last until 2015, Minh said, adding however that filing a lawsuit is the only hope to change the DOC’s decision, as well as to change the reference country in the next POR.

The catfish exporting sector, meanwhile, has enjoyed both volume and value increases on their US shipments in April, Minh added.

Import orders rose 2 percent compared to March, while prices went from $3.2 a kg to $3.5 a kg, he said.

04/11/2013 11:37 GMT + 7

Source: tuoitrenews.vn