Dumping of Jute in India still issue; Bangladesh seeks end of ADD

The Indian jute industry has complained about Bangladesh’s monetary incentives for jute exports, claiming that India’s jute industry is suffering due to Dhaka’s subsidised operations. In 2017, India introduced a protectionist anti-dumping duty to protect its local jute industry. The duty was imposed on jute yarn, burlap and sacks in 2017 at the rate of $19-352 per ton supplied from Bangladesh, for a period of 5 years till 2022. 

Bangladesh says that the export of jute yarn, twine, sacks and bags showed a negative growth of 14 per cent in 2021-22 compared to the previous year’s exports. But data from Fibre2Fashion’s market insight tool TexPro shows only mild impact of Indian imports of jute products. Fluctuations in the trade can be attributed to many factors including COVID-19. 

The data shows that India’s import of jute and other products (chapter 5307) was $42.120 million in 2017 when the duty was imposed. It decreased slightly to $40.542 million in 2018. But the import surged to $51.218 million in 2019. It had witnessed a downtrend in 2020 at $45.541 million. But the import again increased to $48.129 million in 2021. The import was noted at $19.523 million in the first four month of 2022. As per TexPro, Bangladesh was a dominant supplier of jute products with great margin for India. India’s total imports of jute products from the world was $52.094 million in 2021. Bangladesh had supplied jute products of $48.129 million which is more than 90 per cent of the total jute imports. 

Indian industry is worried about the official import as well as about the illegal supply of the products through Nepal. Indian Jute Mills Association (IJMA) had last month alleged that hessian jute bags are making their way to India from Nepal illegally, which is affecting the domestic jute industry. The trade body shot off a letter to Jogbani integrated check post in Bihar adjoining Nepal to highlight the alleged situation and urged it to take prompt action. 

IJMA said in the letter that traders in Nepal are resorting to unfair trade practices of passing off 'jute sacking bags' as 'hessian fabric'. The practice is very common to avoid duty. The body urged the authorities to take immediate action against this practice which is hurting the domestic jute industry and leading to lower levy collection by the government. 

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KUL)