Industry opposes anti dumping duties in Gulf region.

Dr Abdulwahab Al Sadoun secretary general of the Gulf Petrochemicals and Chemicals Association said that the petrochemicals and chemicals industry in the Gulf region strongly opposes the recent determination of India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry to apply anti dumping duties on exports of polypropylene from the Gulf region.

According to the Disclosure Report issued by India, the Indian government has decided to apply anti dumping measures against polypropylene exports from Oman and Saudi Arabia.

GPCA said in a statement that this decision is not justified because GCC companies are neither dumping products in India nor causing injury to the Indian petrochemical industry. In particular, in the Disclosure Report the Indian anti dumping authorities decided to take the unprecedented approach of rejecting the local price of feedstock used to manufacture polypropylene because the price when sold in Saudi Arabia is considerably lower than the price available in India.

Mr Sadoun observed that for obvious commercial reasons including proximity to the source and low local production and distribution costs, the price of feedstock in Saudi Arabia, as in the Gulf region generally is more competitive than in countries like India that do not have the same endowment of natural resources.

Mr Sadoun stated that the methodology applied by India in its report would clearly not stand up to scrutiny under WTO rules. He confirmed that WTO rules do not allow India to use anti dumping measures to protect its industry from fair trade from competitive producers in the Gulf region that are not dumping their products and are not injuring the Indian industry.

Given India's desire to improve economic relations with Gulf countries and considering the massive investments and employment of Indian nationals in the region, he was surprised that the Indian government would take such a dubious action that is completely without precedent and is in violation of WTO rules.

The statement said that with this move by India, there is a concern that many aspects of business and trade between the GCC and India will be impacted. Nonetheless, Mr Sadoun hoped that the Indian Government would reconsider its approach and throw out this baseless case before it affected economic relations with the Gulf region.

Source : steelguru.com