Monday, May 12, 2014: The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and several State Governments including Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have expressed their ire over imposing an anti-dumping duty on international solar panels. The MNRE has written a letter to the Ministry of Commerce explaining its stand against anti-dumping duties explaining that if duties are imposed on import of solar cells, prices of equipment will go up, result being a negative effect on achieving grid parity in the country.
The opposition comes in the wake of Indian solar panel manufacturers filing a petition for imposing anti-dumping duties on imports from China, Taipei, Malaysia and the US. Domestic manufacturers claim they are bearing the brunt, losing out on business to the tune of Rs 10,000 million as more and more project developers prefer buying international panels at lower costs rather than going for in-house products. Project developers on the other hand argue that Indian panel makers lack sufficient manufacturing capacity and also are poor with respect to quality standards. In rebuttal, Indian manufacturers say their panels do qualify quality norms and that they also possess sufficient capacity to supply for projects.
“We are concerned about the various solar projects that have been tendered by the different states and under the central solar mission. About 4000 MW of projects have been tendered. After long, solar prices have come down but bringing in anti-dumping duties will increase solar prices again and affect projects; we are also concerned about developing the local industry and are encouraging the manufacturers by bringing in domestic content requirement for some solar projects,” joint secretary of MNRE was quoted as saying.
