Ross Hampton, CEO of AFPA, said; ‘Australian industry is vitally interested in the effectiveness of the antidumping system. It must be effective in addressing instances of international subsidies, predatory and anti-competitive behaviour. There are some elements missing from this Bill that would make it more effective.
‘Improving import data transparency is critically important during the investigation of anti-dumping and subsidy cases. The relevant authorities must be able to easily access reliable information from the importers about market of origin conditions in order to make effective and timely decisions.
‘The issue of overseas market conditions should also be addressed in the Bill. One mechanism would be to allow surrogate data to be substituted when price discovery is very difficult or unreliable.
‘The whole concept of a refresh of the anti-dumping system was to streamline it making it more effective for struggling manufacturers to bring about action when threatened by predatory behaviour.
‘The Bill in its current form will help improve the anti-dumping system and underpin Australian jobs and manufacturing capability. However the Bill is still not complete and we call on the Senate to amend it to make it more effective’, said Mr Hampton.