US lowers tra fish anti-dumping duties

The US Department of Commerce on March 31 announced its final decision on the ninth results of its administrative review (POR9) for anti-dumping duties on tra fish fillets imported from Viet Nam, the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) has said.

Under the decision, Vietnamese frozen tra fish filets exported to the US are subjected to anti-dumping taxes.


Accordingly, the anti-dumping duties on products of two mandatory reviewed companies, Vinh Hoan and Hung Vuong, are US$0.03 per kilo and $1.2 per kilo, respectively, and for other companies it is 0.42 per kilo.

Truong Dinh Hoe, VASEP's general secretary, said the new anti-dumping tariffs were much lower than that announced in the preliminary POR9 issued last September, when the tax imposed on products from Hung Vuong Corporation and Vinh Hoan Corporation was $2.15 and $0.42 a kilo, respectively, while other exporters had taxes of $0.99 a kilo.

Hoe said that, after receiving the preliminary decision of POR9, the association and enterprises had worked to protect them against troublesome tariffs. This brought encouraging results.

However, the new tariffs remained high, Hoe said, adding that Viet Nam had sufficient reasons to show that businesses had not dumped tra fish prices.

In addition, choosing Indonesia instead of Bangladesh as previously as the sole benchmark country in calculating the anti-dumping rate of the DOC was unreasonable, Hoe said.

Indonesia is not "economically comparable" to Viet Nam and does not share similarities with Viet Nam in breeding standards and input costs; thus, choosing it as the sole benchmark country in calculating the anti-dumping rate led to high anti-dumping tax rates, he said.

He suggested the DOC reconsider its investigation involved in imposing anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese tra fish exported to the US.

With the new anti-dumping tax rates, exports of Vietnamese tra fish to the US will be affected but not much, he said.

Tra fish export revenue was worth $275 million in the first two months of the year, a year-on-year increase of 8.5 per cent, with the US and EU being two key importers of Vietnamese tra fish, To Thi Tuong Lan, VASEP's deputy general secretary, said.

The country is expected to earn around $1.8 billion from tra fish exports this year, similar to last year's figure, she said.