Govt may impose antidumping duty on Chinese pen drives

Government may impose anti-dumping duty of up to $3.12 a piece on Chinese USB Flash Drives (pen drives) to protect domestic players from below-cost shipments from China.

In its final findings, the Directorate General of Anti- dumping and Allied Duties (DGAD) has said the product has been exported from that country into the Indian market at prices less than their normal values.

The application for the investigation was filed by Storage Media Products Manufacturers & Marketers Welfare Association on behalf of the domestic producers represented by Moser Baer India Ltd.

"...The Authority is of the view that imposition of definitive anti-dumping duty is required to offset dumping and injury. Therefore, the Authority considers it necessary to recommend imposition of definitive anti-dumping duties on the imports...," a Commerce Ministry notification said.

The recommended anti-dumping duty are - $3.06 per piece and $3.12 per piece.

Anti-dumping duty is recommended by the Commerce Ministry, while the Finance Ministry imposes it.

The DGAD has also concluded that due to dumping of the product, the domestic industry has suffered material injury.

USB Flash Drives are also known in the market parlance by various other names such as pen drive, keychain drives, key drives, USB sticks, flash sticks, jump sticks, USB keys or memory keys.

It is a data storage device which uses flash memory and USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface to interact with computers or other multimedia devices for data exchange. They are typically small, lightweight, hot-swappable and rewritable.

Unlike safeguard duties, which are levied in a uniform way, anti-dumping duties vary from product to product and from country to country.

Countries initiate anti-dumping probes to check if domestic industry has been hurt because of a surge in below- cost imports. As a counter-measure, they impose duties under the multilateral WTO regime.