India will not impose anti-dumping duty on solar panels - minister

By Manoj Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's finance ministry has decided against imposing an anti-dumping duty on imports of solar panels, its trade and junior finance minister said on Wednesday.

Days before Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office in May, a quasi-judicial body ordered the imposition of the duty on panels imported from the United States, China, Taiwan and Malaysia to protect domestic solar manufacturers.

The about-face is likely to help mend frayed commercial ties with major trading partners, but it will upset Indian manufacturers who say rivals benefit from state subsidies and sell their products at artificially low prices.

The order issued in May had set duties of between 11 and 81 U.S. cents per watt following a investigation which started in 2011. The ruling had to be published by the finance ministry within a stipulated time frame to take effect.

"There was no notification. We allowed it to lapse," Nirmala Sitharaman, the trade and junior minister for finance, said, without elaborating.

Modi is a strong advocate of solar energy and India aims to raise its solar power capacity to 20,000 MW by 2022 from 1,700 MW currently. India imported solar products worth nearly 60 billion rupees ($983.8 million) last year, according to an industry estimate, whereas domestic manufacturers' sales amounted to less than 2 percent of that figure.

(Writing by Rajesh Kumar Singh; Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Simon Cameron-Moore)