Written by Prabha Raghavan
| New Delhi |
Updated: February three, 2020 5:01:11 am
It additionally follows “persistent” demand “for quite some time” from a number of industries to permit them to supply the product at a extra inexpensive fee.
The authorities’s resolution to abolish anti-dumping duties on a uncooked materials for artificial fibre-based mostly clothes and sure plastic-based mostly merchandise will carry down their manufacturing price and probably boost exports, say producers. The transfer, introduced “in public interest” within the Budget Saturday, does away with a earlier NDA authorities resolution to dam nations like China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Iran, Korea and Thailand from considerably exporting the fabric — purified terephthalic acid (PTA) — to India.
It additionally follows “persistent” demand “for quite some time” from a number of industries to permit them to supply the product at a extra inexpensive fee.
“That particular product (PTA) is a raw material for many industries. There has been persistent demand that they should be allowed to source that particular product at an affordable rate, even if it means importing it,” stated Sitharaman.
“We had a look at it, many had been waiting for it (to be removed). We thought at this time that when many industries are dependent on imported raw materials that we are allowing so many others to come in, why not allow this,” she stated. The minister had stated in her Budget speech that simple availability of this “critical input” at “competitive” costs was fascinating to unlock “immense” potential within the textile sector, seen as a “significant” employment generator.
Explained
Focus on exports, competitiveness
The elimination of the anti-dumpting obligation would drastically assist the nation to boost the worldwide competitiveness, boost exports and in addition allow the home producers to compete with the cheaper imports.
The transfer could lower costs of PTA by as a lot as $30 per metric tonne of the product, in accordance with RK Vij, common secretary of the PTA Users Association.
“We have been fighting for the last four-and-a-half years (to abolish the anti-dumping duty),” he advised The Indian Express. The duties had led to downstream producers of artificial materials working at solely 70 per cent of their precise capability, he stated.
While India has a number of home PTA producers like Reliance Industries and the Indian Oil Corporation, artificial material makers have confronted shortages of PTA on a number of events, Vij argued.
“Exports of these downstream products have dropped and, in some cases, their imports have risen as it is cheaper to procure them from outside India,” he stated.
The anti-dumping duties, first imposed round July 2014, levied extra fees between $27 to $160 per metric tonne for these wishing to import PTA, in accordance with the Southern India Mills’ Association. Data from the Commerce Ministry exhibits exports of some merchandise made with PTA like polyester staple fibres (used to make artificial yarn) dropped over 35 per cent to $197 million in 2015-16 from $309 million in 2013-14. In 2018-19, India exported $320 million price of this product. Exports of textured yarn of polyesters dropped 19 per cent to round $680 million in 2015-16 from round $842 million 2013-14, earlier than rising to round $832 million final monetary 12 months.
“This (removal of the anti-dumpting duty) would greatly help the country to enhance global competitiveness, boost exports and enable domestic manufacturers to compete with cheaper imports,” stated Ashwin Chandran, chairman of SIMA, Coimbatore.
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