Editorial
Anti-dumping issue
Committee must become proactive in country's interest
WE are concerned at the news of huge quantities of foreign goods being regularly dumped in the country by overseas manufacturers. A report in the business page of this daily gave details of how despite the existing international law prohibiting export of goods at a lower price than the price in the domestic market, many countries are flouting the law, especially when exporting goods to Bangladesh. And because of this practice, one can easily see how shops in every corner are overflowing with imported consumers goods, mostly cheap and substandard as far as price and quality are concerned. This no doubt is forcing the local manufacturers to face uneven competition and financial loss at the end of the day. But World Trade Organisation (WTO) clearly states that export of a product may be termed dumping if the exporting company sells it at a price lower than the price it normally charges in the domestic market. Bangladesh has officially adopted the anti-dumping rule in 1995 following an agreement at the WTO but so far it has not been able to reap any benefit from it.
Although under the WTO law an aggrieved company can lodge complaints to its government against dumping and the government may take the matter up with WTO, Bangladeshi manufacturers have never lodged any such complaints seeking action for violation of the law by foreign exporters. It is further disconcerting to learn that local manufacturers are quite unaware of the process of filing anti-dumping complaints and that they are not well informed of the domestic price index of products in other countries.
We understand that the Bangladesh government had formed a high-profile committee a year ago to look into the matter but it was unsuccessful in completing the task of identifying the sectors that were affected by the dumping problem. The committee also failed to submit any report to the higher authorities within the given time. Now that a reshuffling of the committee has been done by the commerce ministry it is likely that the business sector will expect some immediate and positive action that will bring some results. We hope, this time around, the committee will live up to the expectation of the local manufacturers by taking the dumping issue to international courts, if necessary.
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