India disputes anti-dumping action on shrimp exports

Friday, 13 June 2003, 19:30 IST
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WASHINGTON: India has challenged the locus standi of a grouping of shrimp-producing southern states in the U.S. that has brought an anti-dumping complaint against shrimp imports from India. Visiting Commerce and Industry Minister Arun Jaitley, who had a three-hour-long discussion with U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick, said it was India's view that the standing rules of the U.S. Commerce Department in this regard should be "fairly applied". "We believe, the Southern Shrimp Alliance, does not have the adequate standing in terms of numbers and, therefore, we think this has to be determined by the Department of Commerce." The minister also said he had taken up the matter with Commerce Secretary Bob Evans. India is now the largest exporter of shrimps and 88 percent of the shrimps consumed in the U.S. is imported. Dumping is the import of goods at a price below the home-market or a third-country price or below the cost of production. A dumping margin represents by how much the fair value price exceeds the dumped price. Imposition of anti-dumping duties requires final affirmative determinations from both the Department of Commerce on dumping and the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) on injury (losses). Jaitley said Zoellick, "who appreciated our stance", explained that any anti-dumping issue raised has to have 25 percent of domestic manufacturers or producers supporting it for consideration by the Commerce Department, and the Alliance has not got that 25 percent support. Jaitley also told Zoellick that India would like to export some of its world famous mangoes to the U.S. but they wanted some "risk analysis" on mangoes. "We have provided this about a fortnight ago." On whether he had taken up the issue of H1-B visas, which has been worrying many IT professionals, Jaitley said he did bring this up during his talks with both Zoellick and Evans. The annual cap on H1-B visas, raised to 195,000 to accommodate a higher demand during the dotcom boom, will revert to 65,000 this year if Congress doesn't intervene. The government also is rumoured to be reviewing L-1 visas, which multinational companies use to transfer their top employees to the U.S. Jaitley said: "We discussed a large number of bilateral and multilateral issues and one of the bilateral issues which does concern us immediately is the issue of GSP (generalised system of preferences) which had been withdrawn in 1992 because of alleged inadequate intellectual property (IP) protection law in India. "Now we have amended the IPR (IP rights) regime, therefore GSP should be restored. It covers about 842 items. On the GSP issue we will continue the dialogue. We have started detailed videoconferencing on our IPR system. The process will continue." Earlier, in his address to the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, Jaitley reiterated the Indian government's commitment to the economic reform process and said it had transformed the Indian economy. Coming to the strengths of the Indian economy, Jaitley recounted how India has carved for itself a niche in the knowledge trade sector and noted that India had considerable manpower resource of skilled and unskilled labour which can meet the needs of all developed economies. The minister also urged U.S. investors to take advantage of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs) as also the Agri-Export Zones that have great potential for exports. The SEZ, he emphasised, with total or near total exemption from all duties, presented a great opportunity for investment which U.S. businesses should exploit not only for the manufacturing of merchandise but also for services. Indian commerce secretary Dipak Chatterjee, additional secretary S.N. Menon and senior members of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) accompanied the minister.
Source: IANS
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