The United States Department of Commerce (DOC) has decided to officially levy higher anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese frozen warm-water shrimp exports during the tenth review period, starting February 1, 2014 to January 31, 2015 (POR10).
The decision, which was announced by the Vietnam Competition Authority (VCA), led to Vietnamese authorities to consider filing a lawsuit against the DOC as the duty rate for Vietnamese shrimp increased from 0.91 per cent in the previous review to 4.78 per cent at present, Vietnam News reported.
The VCA pointed out that one mandatory respondent that the DOC selected will be taxed at 4.78 per cent and voluntary respondents will also have to pay the same duty rate.
Meanwhile, the tariff imposed on other Vietnamese firms or exporters not examined as mandatory or voluntary respondents in the POR10, remains at 25.76 per cent.
The mandatory respondents are those exporters selected for the individual investigation performed by the DOC as part of its review of untidumping duties while those exporters that have not initially been chosen for the review but would like to participate in it and are accepted by the DOC are those deemed as voluntary.
The review was requested on 51 Vietnamese shrimp exporters, including two mandatory respondents, Minh Phu Group and Soc Trang Seafood JSC, Tuoi Tre Newspaper informed.
On the other hand, the Competitive Management Department explained that the US was switching to a new calculation methodology, which is called differential pricing, which was the reason for this high duty rates during the tenth review.
Another reason is their selection of the values and a surrogate country.
"The US used to choose Bangladesh as a surrogate country to calculate antidumping tariffs for Vietnamese exporters in their previous administrative reviews," the department explained.
"But in the tenth review, although Bangladesh was still chosen as the main surrogate country, they also used some of the values of India to calculate the inputs," it added.
According to Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters & Producers (VASEP), the higher anti-dumping duties will pose difficulties for their exports to the U.S. market in the future.
During the first seven months of this year, Việt Nam earned an export turnover of USD 364.8 million from shrimp exports, reflecting a year-on-year increase of 16.3 per cent.
Source: www.fis.com
Key words : US, raises antidumping duties, on Vietnamese shrimp.
