Geneva: India, US and Brazil were the leading initiators of anti-dumping investigations in 2015, a WTO report said.

It said that the WTO members initiated 107 new anti-dumping investigations from January to June 2015, just slightly up from 106 in the same period in 2014.

“The top initiators in 2015 were again the US (15 new investigations), followed by Brazil (12) and India (12), with Turkey also launching 12,” WTO’s Annual Report 2016 said. The WTO members are allowed to apply anti-dumping measures on imports of a product where the exporting company ships the product at a price lower than the price it normally charges in its home market and the dumped imports cause or threaten to cause injury to the domestic industry. The report also said that the safeguard investigations were initiated by 11 members including India, Indonesia and Malaysia. The products covered ranged from ceramic tiles and cars to polyethylene terephthalate, used for making beverage containers, and alloy and non-alloy steel, it added. A safeguard investigation seeks to determine whether increased imports of a product are causing, or are threatening to cause, serious injury to a domestic industry. “…many WTO members expressed concerns about the proliferation of safeguard measures,” it said. Further, it said that few members had raised the issue of local content requirements in solar power generation projects in India. — PTI