Salman Nabi, Chairman, National Tariff Commission (NTC) arrived back a day before Eid after a visit to China's Bureau of Fair Trade (BFT). There he shared experiences of best practices on dumping.
His visit was to learn China's trade mechanism in the face of hundreds of complaints from India, Japan, the US and other countries received in the Chinese BFT against exported goods. The BFT shares information on dumping process with other case handlers to exchange best practice process in international trade.
Pakistan has a commitment to WTO and in view of this it too received hundreds of application from domestic industries to investigate complaints of dumping of foreign goods. The NTC investigates the matter with involvement of all stakeholders and provides a level playing field, helping them to become efficient, competitive so as to survive in the international market.
Sometime ago, the NTC received complaints that they have not taken action against dumping of Chinese goods in the local market. The NTC officials think of the complaints as ill founded. Only recently, it imposed anti-dumping duties on ceramic tiles imported from China.
In the first case, Pakistan levied anti-dumping duties on urea formaldehyde compound imported from China and used in Pakistan for manufacture of plastic tableware.
The procedure followed by the NTC for imposing anti-dumping duty is fairly complex. When NTC receives a complaint, the domestic industry must represent at least 25 percent of the country's total produce in that particular field of product.
The NTC in Pakistan must then inform the relevant government as well as foreign exporters of that country about the complaint. The NTC teams then go out to research on domestic industry as well as their counterpart producer [in a foreign country] to examine cost accounting of production expense at both ends. The normal price at factory gate is taken as index and the net export price charged is also taken into consideration.
Notices are also placed in newspapers of Pakistan and also published in Pakistan Gazette to invite all stakeholders to get registered with the NTC as 'interested party' to the complaint.
Interested parties acquire the right to examine relevant files as well as be represented at hearing of the complaint to examine injury to the domestic industry because of the import from a foreign country of the product. NTC then prepares a self-counted note relating to the complaint and invites comments on the report from all concerned parties.
After receipt of comments, a statement of essential facts is prepared based on the comments received and particular determination of NTC, before reaching final decision.
The final decision carries sound arguments. Whenever litigation has been initiated by stakeholders in the Supreme Court, which is the appellate authority, not a single case has been upturned against the NTC. The NTC officials aver that the final dispute mechanism rests with the WTO body at Geneva, and interested parties have the choice to refer the matter there.