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India : Bedlinen Under EC Scanner Again |
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2003-7-2 9:28:00
The European Commission (EC) has reactivated its anti-subsidy
investigations into Indian cotton bedlinen, though it is yet to scrap the anti-dumping duty on the product in accordance with the World Trade Organisation’s appellate body ruling. A two-member EC delegation met senior government officials in New Delhi on June 26 and 27 and queried about various export promotion schemes to determine whether exports of bedlinen and other textile products had been “subsidised”, violating WTO rules.
The team, on a month-long trip to India, is also scheduled to visit five bed linen manufacturing companies, including Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Company, Prakash Cotton and Ashok Pasupati.
Mr KK Jalan, joint secretary in the textiles ministry, who kickstarted the two-day discussions, was assisted by officials in the department of revenue, commerce ministry and director-general of foreign trade.
The schemes under the EC scanner include advance licence scheme, advance release order, a variant of advance licence scheme, besides Sections 80-HHC, 10A and 10B of the Income-Tax Act 1961 and benefits flowing to exporters from the hundred per cent export-oriented units (EOU) scheme.
Explaining the rationale behind these schemes, officials maintained that they were “WTO compatible”.Textile industry sources here say the EC had been contemplating anti-subsidy probe into cotton bedlinen for some time and has “reactivated” it
with the avowed objective of imposing anti-subsidy duty on the product, now that it had lost the anti-dumping case in the WTO appellate body.
They point out that the European Union had levied countervailing duty on polyester texturised yarn (PTY) on grounds that their exports had been subsidised notwithstanding the strong refutation by the government to the contrary.
In its report dated April 8, the appellate body had concluded that EC had “failed to act consistently with provisions of the anti-dumping agreement” while implementing the rulings and recommendations of the dispute settlement body in an earlier dispute regarding imposition of dumping duty on bedlinen.
It had also concluded that the EU’s determination that all imports
attributable to non-examined producers were dumped did not lead to a result that was “unbiased, even-handed and fair”.
The appellate body recommended that the Dispute Settlement Board (DSB) requests EC to bring its measure, found to be inconsistent with its obligations under the anti-dumping agreement, into conformity with that agreement.
The appellate body’s report has already been adopted by DSB and is up to EC to implement its ruling.
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