Anti-dumping legislation could be our only protection

WITHOUT PENALISING customs duties, or import quotas or other barriers - the words anti-dumping legislation suddenly achieve headline status.
It's our only protection, said the FTW source - who is a private-sector observer of the T&I authorities' efforts to draft the new bill.
The first anti-dumping report by the Board on Tariffs & Trade was produced in 1924 - but it has hardly been used to date, according to our source. Companies preferred increasing duties, a situation which was reinforced in the protective days of sanctions.
This unlike the US, Canada and Australia, who - since the second half of the 80s - have been the big-users of anti-dumping actions, whenever cut-price imports threatened their domestic industries.
But in the 90s, said our commentator, you will find this anti-dumping attitude also being adopted by numbers of developing market countries - again to protect their local markets.
And the attitude amongst the SA compilers of the new legislation, FTW has been led to believe, is equally aggressive.
If you find that price-cutters are chopping-up your industry - the anti-dumping solution is the only way to go.
But, he warned, you have to prove your case. You would certainly have to have trade statistics for a period - displaying the rapid growth of these allegedly-dumped imports. You would also have to prove that the suppliers' price-levels, did, indeed, merit the dumping description.
But not, however, making anti-dumping a lawyer's money-making paradise, our source added.
The government has professed to be supportive of small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (the famous SMMEs), he said. Anti-dumping cannot be purely an affordable preserve for the corporates - who have the finances to play high court legal games, and indulge in the semantics of legal interpretation.
It needs to be multi-disciplinary - with legal, business management, economic and accountancy input. But it must be open to all - if SMMEs are to get the same protection as the large company conglomerates.
An anti-dumping ombudsman is believed to be part of the current conceptual thinking.
By Alan Peat