US announces new duty rates for marine imports

The US Commerce Department has announced a temporary rate structure of anti-dumping duty on exports of frozen warm water shrimp from India, Brazil, Ecuador, China, Thailand and Vietnam.

The new rates will be applicable from August 2007 so that exporting companies can raise their objections before the department in 120 days. The final duty structure will be announced after reviewing the objections.

The decision, which will prove to be a setback to exporting countries for the time being, emerged from the first administrative review of the performance of the exporters of these countries.

The weighted average of the duty for the Indian export industry has increased from 10.17 per cent to 10.54 per cent.

Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI) sources said the final duty rate would be known by August this year, when the process of the administrative review would be completed.

The temporary duty rates "� where the US department has adopted different duty rates for different companies "� will be a setback to exporters as they firmly believed the duty would be slashed.

While the duty for Liberty Group has been slashed to 4.03 per cent from the current 10.17, that for Falcon Marine has been hiked to 11.09 per cent (10.17).

For Hindustan Lever, the new rate will be much higher at 24.52 per cent (15.36). These companies were the mandatory respondents from the country for the first administrative review.

For other 44 companies that did not apply for the review, the duty has been raised to 10.54 per cent (10.17). But to the industry's dismay, there has been a steep rise in the rate for 16 companies. The rate applicable to them has now skyrocketed to 82.30 per cent from 10.17 earlier.

The weighted average duty of the export industry of Thailand has come down to 4.24 per cent from 5.95 per cent "� a drop of 1.71 percentage points, while the highest duty is 57.64 per cent. For Vietnam, the rate has remained unchanged at 25.76 per cent. There has been a steep rise in the average duty of Brazil as it has increased to 48.13 per cent from 7.05 per cent.

For two companies of Brazil "� SM Pescados Industria Comercio Exportacao and Valenca da Bahia Maricultura SA, the anti-dumping duty will be 349 per cent. Exporters of Ecuador have had a sigh of relief as their average duty will now be lower at 2.25 per cent (3.58 per cent), while China's will remain unaltered at 112.81 per cent.

Meanwhile, the US department started the second administrative review last month.

According to SEAI officials, there will be five such reviews, and around 100 domestic exporters have decided to apply for the second review and are confident of bringing down the duty given their more professional approach to the review this time. The first administrative review was for the February 2005-January 2006 period.