Government of India passes a circular on withdrawal of safeguard duty on aluminium from China

Readers of PrintWeek India will recall TechNova’s stand on anti-dumping of aluminium plates which stated that "unfair competition arises out of the huge subsidies that the Chinese government provides to a variety of industries including litho-grade aluminium coils which are used for manufacturing printing plates."

The current rate of aluminium at the Shanghai Metal Exchange (SME) in the Chinese currency RMB is 2973.33 per tonne as compared to the London Metal Exchange (LME) price in dollars which is 2059.50 per tonne as on 10 December 2011. This means price the of aluminium in China is more than the prices in UK.
 
The recent circular, issued by Indrani Dutt Majumder, director general of safeguards in the department of revenue ministry of finance stating the final findings on imports of aluminium flat rolled products and aluminium foil in to India from China.
 
Below is an excerpt from the notification in which Majumder has said: "An application was filed before me by the Aluminium Association of India (AAI), Mumbai for continued imposition of safeguard duty on imports of aluminium flat rolled products and aluminium foil imported into India from China to protect the domestic producers of aluminium flat rolled products and aluminium foil against ‘market disruption’ or threat of market disruption. "Having satisfied that the requirements of rule 5 were met, the notice of initiation of safeguard investigation concerning imports of aluminium flat, rolled products and aluminium foil into India from China was issued under Rule 6 of Customs Tariff (Transitional Product Specific Safeguard Duty) Rules, 2002 on 14 February 2011 and was published in the Gazette of India Extraordinary on the same day."
 
On request of the applicant AAI, the review safeguard investigation concerning imports of aluminium flat rolled products and aluminium foil in to India from China stands terminated.
 
O Venugopal, director at Anaswara Offset and president of Kerala Master Printers' Association said: "Now we can import the raw material from any country in the world. We can import raw material at a low price resulting in the lower cost of the final product. Currently we have only one aluminium manufacturer, I feel there should be one more manufacturer. In the overall context, this is good news for the printing industry in India."