Thursday, August 28, 2014: There is no anti-dumping duty getting imposed on solar cells and solar panels, which are imported from countries like the US, Malaysia, China and Taiwan. Earlier this year, this duty was recommended by the Commerce Ministry.
The Finance Ministry has taken a decision against imposing these duties which were recommended by the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping (DGAD), a statutory body under the Commerce Ministry. This recommendation was done to protect domestic manufacturers from cheap imports. A Commerce Ministry official told BusinessLine, “Since the Finance Ministry has not come up with its notification within the stipulated three-month period after the DGAD submitted its recommendation, there won’t be any duties imposed on the items.”
Anti-dumping duties were recommended for a steep rate between $0.11 to $0.81 per watt of produced power. In a report from DGAD it was said that these duties will lessen the chances of unfair advantages which are gained by dumping and the duties will help prevent the decline of the domestic industry and also maintain a good amount of choices for the consumers. Earlier it was notified by domestic producers’ body Indian Solar Manufacturers Association that more than 70 per cent of the installed PV capacity is sitting idle in the country and several employees have been jobless so far. All these things have happened from cheap imports of solar panels, cells and glass, which are flooding the markets.
These duties have never gained support from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy and they also argued that these duties would increase the cost of solar power production by almost Rs 16 million per MW. Projects worth 4,000 MW would also get stalled with these duties.
