Skip to main content

India merges anti-dumping, import safeguard bodies

Image
By
India merges anti-dumping, import safeguard bodies
The commerce ministry said the government has amended the rules on allocation of business, shifting work pertaining to safeguard measures to the ministry
India has finally merged the two separate bodies handling anti-dumping and import safeguards to form the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), in line with US International Trade Commission (USITC), for providing comprehensive and swift trade defence mechanism under one umbrella.
Mint on 14 April 2016 had first reported about the proposal made by the commerce ministry. However, the finance ministry, which had administrative control over the Directorate General of Safeguards (DGS), rejected the commerce ministry’s proposal, Mint reported on 7 September 2016. The commerce ministry, however, went ahead and renamed the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) under its control as DGTR.
In a press statement on Wednesday, the commerce ministry said the government has amended the rules on allocation of business, shifting work pertaining to safeguard measures to the commerce ministry. The refurbished DGTR will also bring safeguards (quantitative restrictions) functions of Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) into its fold.
Presently, the trade defence mechanism in India lacks optimality and takes more than a year to complete proceedings in cases pertaining to unfair trade practices. Currently, DGAD deals with anti-dumping and countervailing duty cases, while DGS deals with safeguard measures and DGFT deals with quantitative restriction (QR) safeguards.
The commerce ministry said DGTR will also provide trade defence support to India’s domestic industry and exporters in dealing with increasing instances of trade remedy investigations instituted against them by other countries. In the last three years, India initiated more than 130 anti-dumping/countervailing duty/safeguard cases to deal with rising incidence of unfair trade practices and to provide a level playing field to the domestic industry.
DGTR will be a professionally integrated organization with multi-spectrum skill sets emanating from officers drawn from different services and specialisations. “DGTR will also bring in substantial reduction of the time taken to provide relief to the domestic industry. The newly constituted body is in consonance with the goal of Minimum Government Maximum Governance of the Prime Minister of India,” the commerce ministry said in the statement.

The Mint, New Delhi, 10th May 2018

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RBI rushes in to prop up falling rupee

By
RBI rushes in to prop up falling rupee India’s central bank reportedly intervened in the currency markets on Monday to prevent a further slide in the local unit, which breached the 67 mark to a dollar for the first time in 15 months amid a widening trade gap and runaway import bills fuelled by high crude-oil prices. Some state-owned banks were seen selling dollars aggressively, interventions that market dealers attributed to the central bank’s strategy to stem the decline of the Indian rupee against the US currency. The rupee is the worst performing among a dozen Asian monetary units in the past three months. It lost 4.25 per cent to the dollar during the period, show data from Bloomberg. On Monday, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is said to have sold about Rs 800 million collectively on the spot and exchange traded futures markets, dealers said. An email sent to RBI remained unanswered until the publication of this report. The currency market has seen such a strong central bank interven…
Post a Comment
Read more

GST Refund of Rs 20,000 Cr Pending: Exporters’ Body

By
GST Refund of Rs  20,000 Cr Pending: Exporters’ Body Refund of over Rs 20,000 crore on account of Goods and Services Tax (GST) is pending with the government with more than half the amount stuck as input tax credit, Federation of Indian Export Organisations said on Tuesday. While claims over Rs7,000 crore were cleared in March, the amount was Rs 1,000 crore in April.However, after exporters’ request, the GST council and tax department are organizing a second phase of Special Refund Fortnight starting May 31, which will enable exporters to draw their refunds at a speedy pace. Many exporters have been unable to file the refund of input tax credit due to technical glitches, exports and claim happened in different months. The major challenge lies on ITC refund especially because the process is partly electronic and partly manual which is cumbersome and add to the transaction cost, the exporters’ body said. On IGST, refunds are getting delayed due to airline and shipping companies not submitt…
2 comments
Read more

Shrinking footprints of foreign banks in India

By
Shrinking footprints of foreign banks in India Foreign banks are increasingly shrinking their presence in India and are also becoming more conservative than private and public sector counterparts. While many of them have sold some of their businesses in India as part of their global strategy, some are trying to keep their core expertise intact. Others are branching out to newer areas to continue business momentum.For example, HSBC and Barclays Bank in India have got out of the retail business, whereas corporate-focused Standard Chartered Bank is now trying to increase its focus on retail “Building a retail franchise is a huge exercise and takes a long time. You cannot afford to lose it,” said Shashank Joshi, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ’s India head.According to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) data, foreign banks’ combined loan book shrunk nearly 10 per cent from Rs 3.78 trillion in fiscal 2015-16 to Rs 3.42 trillion last financial year. The banking industry, which includes foreign banks…
Post a Comment
Read more