Posted on 20 Jul 2016
Previously, on March 22 this year, the ministry imposed provisional safeguard duties of 23.3 per cent on steel ingots and 14.2 per cent on steel rods for a maximum of 200 days.
Under the new decision, which will take effect from early next month and last for four years, the safeguard duties will be imposed on alloy and non-alloy steel ingots and steel rods. The steel products are coded 7207.11.00; 7207.19.00; 7202.20.99; 7224.90.00; 7213.10.00; 7213.91.20; 7214.20.31; 7214.20.41; 7227.90.00; 7228.30.10; 9811.00.00.
According to the new regulation, a duty of 23.3 per cent will be imposed on steel ingots until March 21, 2017. The rate then will be reduced to 21.3 per cent,19.3 per cent and 17.3 per cent over the following three years.
As for steel rods, the safeguard duty will be 14.2 per cent until August 1, 2016 and then be increased to 15.4 per cent until March 21, 2017. The rate then will be reduced to 13.9 per cent, 12.4 per cent and 10.9 per cent over the following three years.
From March 22, 2020, the duties on both steel ingots and steel rods will be zero per cent if no extension is made.
However, these safeguards will not be applicable on products from developing and under-developed countries, whose steel exports to Viet Nam account for less than 3 per cent of the country's total imports.
The duty measure was imposed after the MoIT conducted a safeguard investigation into imports of steel ingots and steel rods in the wake of complaints lodged by local producers Hoa Phat Steel JSC, Southern Steel Co Ltd, Thai Nguyen Iron and Steel JSC and Viet Nam-Italy Steel JSC.
The four companies said the proposal for investigations came from a surge of imported steel ingots and steel rods.
Specifically, the amount of imported steel ingots rose from more than 466,000 tonnes in 2012 to 1.5 million tonnes in 2015. The amount of imported steel rods also rose from more than 387,000 tonnes in 2012 to 1.2 million tonnes in 2015.
Many others, however, called for a halt to the investigation as unlike big companies they depended on imported steel ingots for production, and high duties would increase their input costs and lowering profit margin.
Viet Nam has already been imposing trade tariffs of up to 20 per cent on these products.
