The Director General of Trade Remedies has recommended increase in rate of customs duty by 5 per cent on imports of two varieties of palmolein oil originating in Malaysia for a period of 180 days to safeguard the interests of domestic industry.
“It is provisionally concluded that increased imports of the products have caused serious injury and are threatening to cause serious injury to domestic producers. As a result, production/sales of the domestic producers declined significantly resulting in decline in capacity utilisation in the period of investigation….. Thus, it is considered that critical circumstances exist where delay in imposition of safeguard measures would cause irreparable damage to the domestic producers,” a notification on bilateral safeguard investigation issued by the DGTR under the Ministry of Commerce & Industry said on Monday.
The increased duties will be applicable once notified by the Finance Ministry.
Surge in imports
The DGTR had carried out a safeguard duty probe into imports from Malaysia following a complaint from the Solvent Extractors’ Association of India. The alleged surge in imports happened following the lowering of import duties on the items from Malaysia as part of the India-Malaysia Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement. Under the bilateral trade pact, both countries agreed to lower or eliminate import duties on a wide range of products.
The complainants claimed that because of lowering of duties on palmolein under the CECA and the subsequent increase in imports from Malaysia, there was a significant decline in production, sales and capacity utilisation for the product in India. It added that the market share of Indian industry fell while the market share of imports from Malaysia increased.