QCO rollbacks should be the start of bigger cleanups

The rollback or deferment of about 80 quality control orders (QCOs), mostly Steel (55), chemicals (14) and nonferrous metals (8), by the government in recent weeks is a clear admission that disguised protection to large industries through indiscriminate use of QCOs (about 750) is hurting the downstream user industries.

- TNC RAJAGOPALAN

This welcome step should mark the beginning of more actions to eliminate all tariff and non-tariff barriers that protect the big businesses at the expense of the smaller ones.

Barring some exceptions, Indian producers are not globally competitive as our stagnant share of 1.8 per cent in global exports in the last 11 years shows. To protect them from competition, the government has raised the tariffs from an average of about 13 per cent in 2014 to about 17 per cent now. It has also imposed anti-dumping duties on about 180 items, safeguard duties on 5 items and anti-subsidy countervailing duties on 18 items. Investigations have been launched for imposing anti-dumping and other duties on about 70 items, mostly chemicals and metals.