Luxembourg, 21/06/2006 (Agence Europe) - In an anti-dumping case, the Indian steel cable producer, the Calcutta-based company Usha Martin, has asked for decisions by the Commission and the Council of late 2005 and early 2006, in which the Commission withdrew a minimum-price commitment offered by the Indian company, which it had previously accepted. The Council executed this decision.
The Commission claimed that Usha Martin had omitted to provide a report on those of its sales which were not covered by the commitment and had claimed that cables originated from Dubai, when given the level of processing of the raw material in Dubai, which was considered to be insufficient, the origin of the product should have been India.
Usha Martin retorted that the omission of the report had been a human error and that the sanction was out of all proportion, because there had not been a serious violation of the price commitment. As for the origin of the products, the Commission had ill-applied the relevant criteria by refuting the non-Indian origin of cables produced in Dubai using Indian metal strands. Lastly, Usha Martin argues that the customs services of the Member States could, for example, have demanded that exports from Dubai stop, rather than bring in the excessive sanction of withdrawing the commitment.