April 4, 2006

US initiates review of shrimp dumping duty

The US department of commerce (DoC) initiated proceedings from Monday (Apr 3) on the review of the 10.17 percent anti-dumping duty on Indian shrimp imposed more than a year ago.

An initiation notice, along with a questionnaire would be published in the federal register. Shrimp exporters would be given a month to answer the questionnaire.

The previous practice was to select the three largest exporters to represent the country's exports to be used as a reference.

However, this practice has now been amended to allow random sampling, meaning that a very small export company with limited export quantities may be used instead.

Already, 17 Indian exporters have applied for administrative review, and several of them said they had a strong case. If the US went ahead with the random sampling methodology, India would have to take the matter seriously as there was a total of over INR 2 billion (US$45 million) involved in the anti-dumping duties and bonds, exporters said.