The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) of the Philippines may impose preliminary safeguard duty on galvanized steel and pre-painted sheet and coil imports after it completes its initial investigation of a petition filed by Puyat Steel Corp.
A decision to impose a preliminary safeguard measure would depend on the documents to be submitted by stakeholders for the preliminary investigation. After the notice of preliminary investigation is given, parties are given five days to submit their comments on the issue. If parties are unable to give their position within five days, they may seek an extension of between 15 to 30 days.
In its petition, Puyat Steel claimed that increased imports have caused serious injury to the domestic industry, citing declining market share, production sales, capacity utilization, productivity, profitability, price suppression and undercutting.
Safeguard measures refer to higher duties which a country imposes on imported goods to provide relief to domestic industries.
These measures can be applied when it is found that there is increased imports of the commodity and when the local industry is threatened by the increase in purchases of such product from other countries.
Source: ‘The Philippine Star’, Manila; 19 Oct 2013
