A team of officials from the US Department of Commerce will soon visit India to probe whether the country's shrimp farming units are producing and exporting cheap seafood products to America.
The American delegation will also verify the accounting practices of leading Indian exporters, the Seafood Exporters Association of India officials said on Tuesday.
According to the association secretary Sandu Joseph, the US Commerce Department is these days trying to determine whether shrimps from India, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Thailand and Vietnam were being sold in the United States at unfairly low prices. The department is to conclude its investigation by July end.
The visit of the US delegation is part of the investigating process. "We are certain that we will win in this legal battle in the US. We will prove that we are not dumping cheap shrimp products to America," Joseph told rediff.com.
Accusing India and the other countries of flooding the US market with cheap shrimps, the Southern Shrimp Alliance in America had filed a request with the US International Trade Commission and the Department of Commerce.
The petition demanded to slap tariffs on the $2.4 billion worth shrimp imports to America.
Early this year, the Commission came out with a preliminary verdict to impose anti-dumping duties against these countries saying lower-priced shrimps have been hurting the US seafood industry. The verdict also cleared the way for the US Commerce Department to set preliminary duties to offset the alleged dumping by the six countries.
The next step in the process of the anti-dumping suit is to prove whether there has been dumping, and at what level. As part of this process, the US Department of Commerce has already sent detailed questionnaires to leading Indian exporting companies. The Department would also look into the accounting practices of these firms.
The Indian seafood exporters have roped in Garvey Schubert Barer, a reputed law firm in the US, to fight the anti-dumping charges.
Indian exporters said that they have been getting 'sympathetic support' from the US Congressmen to fight the anti-dumping investigations against India and five other countries.
Over a dozen members of the US Congress recently wrote to US Commerce Secretary Donald Evans asking him to use 'fair and reasonable' procedures in the anti-dumping investigations.
Joseph said that ever since anti-dumping investigation begun, the Indian shrimp exports to the US have practically stopped. "We expect the shrimp exports to the US to resume only after a final verdict on the anti-dumping case," he said.
To offset the loss in the US, the Indian exporters are these days trying to penetrate into other countries that include Europe and China.
The United States is India's second-largest shrimp buyer after Japan. Annual shrimp imports by the US are estimated to be over $3 billion and India exported shrimp worth $360 million last year.
