Pakistan's Ministry of Commerce has initiated World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute settlement proceedings to challenge South African decision to impose preliminary anti-dumping duty on the import of Pakistani cement.
Earlier this year, South Africa authorities (ITAC) imposed duties on various Pakistani cement exporters ranging from 15-68 per cent. The South African government considered that these imports were causing injury to the local cement industry.
The basis of Pakistan's argument is that the injury determination mechanism followed by South African authorities (ITAC) is flawed and does not reflect true analysis of the situation.
Pakistan has said that South African authorities used an extended period of investigation of four years for causation analysis and alleges it did not properly examine the evidence in the light of trends over that period. In addition, Pakistan considers that South Africa 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 domestic cement producers.
Pakistan also accuses South Africa of not properly examining the entire product under investigation and instead limiting its injury analysis to bagged cement and disregarded sales by the domestic industry of the bulk cement.
The challenge has claims that the South African authorities didn't provide a fair opportunity to Pakistani cement exporters to defend their case, denying access to the trade statistics.
