India Slaps Anti-Dumping Duties on 5 China Items, Manufacturers Upbeat

They say move to protect domestic sectors will give them an edge; prices expected to rise

- Nirmala Ganapathy

PATNA - Chennai-based Rakesh Jain, who makes stainless steel vacuum bottles, said his business struggled to compete with cheap Chinese imports.

"We had to sell at a cheaper rate, so we couldn't make much money. We didn't have the investment to plough back into additional capacity. We were never able to grow," Mr Jain said.

He said about 90 per cent of the stainless steel vacuum bottle market was cornered by imports from China, leaving Indian manufacturers either breaking even or operating with very small profit margins.

But now, he sees an opportunity after the Indian government, in a bid to protect domestic industries, imposed an anti-dumping duty of US$1,732 (S$2,320) per tonne on vacuum-insulated flasks and other stainless steel vacuum vessels from China.

Manufacturers said the duty, imposed on March 17, would give them a competitive edge.

Mr Jain's small business, Thermo Housewares, makes stainless steel vacuum bottles and sells to larger businesses apart from exporting. It produces 100,000 bottles a month, with prices ranging from 250 rupees (S$3.90) to 800 rupees.

"This anti-dumping duty will definitely help us. We will look at investment and scale up," he said.

Anti-dumping duties are a protectionist measure that a World Trade Organisation member can take if goods are being dumped at a lower price than the cost in the home market or lower than the cost of production.

The Indian government last week decided to levy anti-dumping duties on not just vacuum flasks, but four other products. They are aluminium foil; soft ferrite cores, which are magnetic materials often used in high-frequency applications such as transformers and inductors; trichloroisocyanuric acid, used as a disinfectant or bleaching agent; and polyvinyl chloride paste resin, a plastic material.