China dumping key medicine in India
NEW DELHI: The government has found sufficient evidence that China is dumping a key medicine -- ciprofloxacin hydrochloride -below cost in the Indian market and hurting the domestic pharmaceutical industry, two officials aware of the development said.
The medicine is used to treat bacterial infections, including skin, bone, respiratory and urinary tract infections, and certain types of diarrhoea.
After an investigation, the government has found that the volume of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride imported from China has increased and at a pace that is undercutting prices in the domestic industry, the officials cited above said, requesting anonymity. China alone accounts for about 98% of the total Indian imports of the medicine. “Domestic medicine had a price disadvantage of up to $3.3 per kg over Chinese products,” an official of a pharmaceutical association said on condition of anonymity. Even as domestic manufacturing capacity of the medicine has increased, actual production and sales of local industry have declined and the market share of Chinese ciprofloxacin hydrochloride in India has increased, causing losses to the Indian pharma industry.
“DGTR (Directorate General of Trade Remedies) on June 15 provisionally concluded that the domestic industry has suffered material injury and its preliminary findings favoured the imposition of an anti-dumping duty on Chinese import,” one of the officials said. DGTR may take a final view on the matter after hearing all interested parties again next month, he added.
DGTR, is an arm of the ministry of commerce and industry and acts as a single-window agency providing a level playing field to domestic industry against unfair trade practices. It had initiated the investigation against the dumping of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride from China in January .
“Dumping of goods below their actual cost harms the domestic industry, and anti-dumping duty is one of the means to protect local manufacturing from such practices,” IDMA executive director Ashok Madan said.