The commerce ministry of India has been recommended for the imposition of anti-subsidy duty on certain types of aluminium wires imported from Malaysia for five years. This is a movement focused on safeguarding the domestic players from imports that are subsidized in Malaysia.
Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), the finance ministry’s investigation arm in its detections after a probe stated that imposition of definitive anti-subsidy duty is required to counterbalance subsidization.
DGTR said in a notification: "The authority recommends imposition of definitive countervailing duty for five years."
“The authority considers it necessary to recommend imposition of the duty on the imports”, it added.
However, the finance ministry takes the final call on the imposition of the duty. The directorate carried out the probe following complaints from Vedanta Ltd and Bharat Aluminium Company Ltd. They had filed a petition on behalf of domestic producers for initiation of the anti-subsidy investigation.
DGTR has concluded: “The domestic industry has suffered an injury due to subsidized products from Malaysia. It has recommended a duty of 6.87% and 16.5%.”
Anti-subsidy duty is a country-specific duty imposed to shield the domestic industry against unfair trade subsidies provided by the local governments of the exporting nations.
World Trade Organization (WTO) global trade rules say that a member country is permitted to impose anti-subsidy to countervailing duty if a product is subsidized by the government of its trading partner.
Responses
