Trade Articles

The UPA government has decided to levy anti dumping duty across the various categories of the colored picture tubes(CPTs), imported by the manufacturers. The move is likely to be taken with a motive of curbing the 'dumping process' initiated by the China, Malaysia, Thailand and Korea. It has been observed that these nations are busy in dumping their products in the India. These punitive duty will more likely to be vary between Rs 878 and Rs 4369 on the cathode ray color picture tube (CPT) as per the screen size. The move of the government is influenced by the primary findings of the commerce ministry. It has been observed that the above mentioned countries were exporting their products in India at the value which was low their normal value. Such business practices were hampering the domestic industry. Many key player companies are likely to be get affected with the said declaration made by the Department of Revenue. Major market holders like LG Philips(Korea), Samsung (Malaysia), Shenzen Samsug (China), Irico Group Electronics (China) are now needed to amend their policies due to the release of this new notification. The figures derived by the industrial sector shows that the Indian market is expected to cross the mark of 12.5 million television sets in 2008 with flat screen models are holding around 70% of the share.

The government move of slapping the anti-import duty clearly means that the consumers are now needed to shell out more bucks from their pockets while purchasing color television. It would ramp up prices of television sets due to the anti-duty on picture tubes which stands around 45% of the final item. Mr. R.Zutsi, president of the Consumer Electronic Appliances Manufacturer Association, said that “The government’s proposal to impose an anti dumping duty of 10%, 12% and 22% on 14 inch, 21 inch and 29 inch CPTs respectively, over and above the existing 10% custom duty on components, will lead to an increase in input costs and this in turn would force the industry players to increase prices, hence impacting the end user.” Further he added that there has been a huge gap existed between the demand and supply of the pictures tubes in the Indian markets. Moreover, those pictures tubes which are produced in the national territory fail to equate with the international quality norms, which makes it a complete shortage of the 21 & 29 inch picture tubes. This has make it necessary for the key players to import colored picture tubes from China, Korea, Thailand and Malaysia. LG Electronics has already frame out their policy of increasing prices of color television sets by nearly 3 to 4%, more likely to be get affected from 1st August, 2008.

As per an estimate made in the industrial arena, in 2008 over 15 million units of television sets would be sold in 2008. But the Samtel Color and JCT Electronics, national manufacturers have the production capacity of around 10 million units. This means a clear shortage of more than 5 million units, which could be needed to be dealt with the import. Pioneer of the industry oppose the anti dumping duty by figuring out the rising input costs. It has been projected that such imposition will rise the sourcing cost, which would finally affect the sale price of televisions. For 21 inch picture tubes entire demand is meet through importing process. In the present scenario all pivotal television manufacturers like LG, Onida, Samsung Videocon are importing colored picture tubes from the nations like China, Thailand etc. It has been estimated that nearly 40% of the color television sets sold every month in the local market are manufactured through the imported picture tubes.