India mines ministry to decide on duty protection for domestic aluminium sector

India's primary aluminium producers are finally hoping to see some ray of hope as the country's mines ministry said that it is working to come out with a decision on duty protection measure for the domestic aluminium sector in a couple of weeks from now.

"We are working to provide safeguard duty protection for primary aluminium producers being hurt from dumping. We will decide (on the matter) soon, may be in two-three weeks," Union Mines Secretary Lavender Kumar said in a recent press meet. He further indicated that it could be either in the form of safeguard duty or anti-dumping duty.

India's primary aluminium sector has been facing dumping of cheap aluminium products from countries like China for over a year now. This has impacted rather severely on their revenues and market shares. They have approached the government multiple times seeking relief in the form of duty protection on the import of the light metal. But the government, till now, did little to address their concerns. They had finally gotten Mecon to prepare a report on aluminium dumping for them based on which the government was supposed to take decision.



In a recent notification, the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) said it has found prima facie evidence of dumping of aluminium from China. "The authority hereby initiates an investigation into the alleged dumping, and consequent injury to the domestic industry... To determine the existence, degree and effect of any alleged dumping and to recommend the amount of anti-dumping duty, which if levied would be adequate to remove the injury to the domestic industry," the notification read.

The period of investigation spanned from April 2014 to March 2015.

India's aluminium consumption currently stands at three million tonnes, of which nearly half is met thorugh imports, mainly from China. Aluminium imports had risen 159 per cent in 2015 from their 2011 levels, industry sources reported.

{googleAdsense}

However, India's demand for safeguard duty imposition on aluminium imports has been criticised by other nations on the global front. According to a Hindu Business Line report, he EU has claimed that the conditions for implementation of the same have not been met by the country's primary aluminium producers. It further pointed out that both the production and domestic capacity of aluminium were increasing which is indicative of the fact that the industry was nowhere close to approaching stagnation as claimed by the domestic players.

The US also questioned the rationale behind Indian aluminium makers' demand for safeguard duties on aluminium imports.

Japan said India's determination used as the basis for the safeguard measure did not meet WTO requirements.

In reply to all these criticisms, India said the details of all the findings regarding aluminium dumping were available on the government website; any entity interested to examine could do that online. In case, any country finds the data misleading could lodge a dispute against India at the WTO.