Context
India has initiated an anti-dumping probe against imports of a certain type of optical fibre from China, Indonesia and South Korea following a complaint by a domestic player.
- The duty is aimed at protecting domestic industry from cheap imports.
What is ‘anti-dumping’ duty?
- Countries start anti-dumping probes to determine whether their domestic industries have been hurt because of a surge in cheap imports.
- As a countermeasure, they impose these duties under the multilateral regime of the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO).
- India is a member of the Geneva-based World Trade Organisation (WTO).
- The duty is aimed at ensuring fair trading practices and creating a level-playing field for domestic producers vis-a-vis foreign producers and exporters.
- India has already imposed anti-dumping duty on several products to tackle cheap imports from various countries, including China.
Dumping
Dumping is said to occur when the goods are exported by a country to another country at a price lower than its normal value. This is an unfair trade practice which can have a distortive effect on international trade.
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The product
- The commerce ministry's investigation arm Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) is probing the alleged dumping of 'Dispersion Unshifted Single-mode Optical Fibre' originating in or exported from these three nations.
- The product is used for the manufacture of different kinds of cables, including optical fibre, tight buffer cables, armoured and un-armoured cables.
- Single-mode optical fibre is mainly applied to high-data-rate, long distance and access network transportation.
