Brussels, 24/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - The Union Council instituted a permanent anti-dumping duty on imports of certain cathode tubes for colour televisions from India and Korea. For deliveries from Lithuania, Malaysia and China, the procedure is on the other hand closed. The regulation, published in the official Journal N°L/267, notes that the amount disposed of under the provisional duty by the exporters of these countries are freed, while for the Indian and Korean companies, they will be submitted to a definitive duty rate.
The in-depth investigation, lead since the establishment of provisional measures, last April, enabled to confirm that, in the case of Lithuania, the margin for dumping was located at 1.3% or well below the minimum ceiling. The same applies for Malaysia, where two firms represent together all the exports of the products concerned, namely Samsung Electron Devices and Chungwa Picture Tubes. The dumping is on the other hand qualified as "significant" with regards to the products from China, but the volume of delivered is "negligible".
For India, the margin for definitive dumping is set at 20.5% and for Korea at 19.7%. The imports from these two countries have been examined, in depth, in order to assess the prejudice suffered by the Community industry. Their volume fell by 84% between 1995 and 1997 to then rise up to 291% until the period of investigation, which represents an increase of 38% for the period as a whole. Their Community market share also progressed downwards, while their posted price tended to fall (-19%), trend that is even more pronounced if they take into consideration the period between 1997 and the investigation period (-30%). The analysis reveals, among others, margins for the under quoting of prices, compared to European prices, on 14.7% for India and 10.8% for Korea. At the same time, the Community industry, which is made up of only one producer, saw most of its economic indicators fall in a significant manner: -9% for production, -21% for sale prices, -4 percentage pints for profits (causing negative profitability during the period as a whole) and -15.5 percentage points for the market share. The fall was even clearer between 1997 and the investigation period, when the Indian and Korean imports saw a significant increase and European production fell by 15%, its sale prices by 19% and employment by 13%. This data enabled to demonstrate "the considerable negative incidence" that these imports have had on the position of Community industry, in terms of market share, volume of sales, sale prices and profitability; the prejudice is thus "significant". The European Commission have now proposed to the Council - which followed step, the imposition of definitive measures against the incriminated producers during the next five years, in order to avoid that the position of the Community industry gets any worse.