Pakistan on 09 November 2015 approached the World Trade Organisation (WTO) about dispute settlement consultations with South Africa regarding the imposition of provisional anti-dumping duties on Pakistan Portland cement. This action was necessitated due to what Pakistan considers to be South Africa’s inconsistent treatment of various articles of the Anti‑Dumping Agreement. South Africa now needs to respond.
Pakistan raised a number of contentions, amongst others that the methodology of the International Trade Administration Commission of South Africa (Itac) for its determination of material injury was flawed. That Itac had used an extended period of investigation of four years, instead of three, for its causation analysis and that Itac did not properly examine the evidence in light of trends over that period. Also, that Itac failed to examine the relationship between the alleged dumping and the worsening of the condition of the domestic industry especially by failing to consider the effects of the decartelisation of the domestic cement producers. Itac is also accused of not properly examining the entire product under investigation and instead limiting its injury analysis to bagged cement, and disregarding sales by the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu) industry of the bulk cement. Finally, that Itac did not provide Pakistani exporters a fair opportunity to defend their case, and denied them access to the trade statistics.
It all emanates from an anti-dumping ruling that Itac initiated on 22 August 2014, and which resulted in provisional anti-dumping duties, ranging from 14.29% to 77.15%, being imposed on 15 May 2015, up to and including 13 November 2015. According to Itac ‘the process of completing an anti-dumping investigation takes an average of 10 months from the date of initiation of an investigation.’ Since final anti-dumping duties were not imposed, the anti-dumping duties have lapsed and Sacu importers can now apply for a refund of the anti-dumping duties. Although the lapsing of anti-dumping duties was unheard of in the past, it is no longer.
Following the publication of the provisional anti-dumping duties, Global Cement on 01 June 2015 reported that the Pakistan government was working on two options to challenge the anti-dumping duties. In the first, to hold bilateral consultations with the South African government, and should this fail to request WTO consultations. In a separate action, Global Cement reported on 01 September 2015 that one of the Pakistan exporters, Lucky Cement, had filed papers in the High Court in Pretoria contesting that Itac had failed to consider the losses suffered by domestic producers due to a Competition Commission of South Africa ruling on the existence of a Sacu cement cartel.
