Govt equipped to stop dumping of foreign goods -- Maran

Govt equipped to stop dumping of foreign goods -- Maran
EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

NEW DELHI, MARCH 2: The Vajpayee Govrnment today said that it may reimpose quantitative restrictions (QRs) if imports of particular commodities reached a dangerous level.

Replying to a spate of supplementaries during the question hour, Union Commerce Minister Murasoli Maran said that the Centre was equipped with several weapons to stop dumping of foreign goods in the country. ``One of them is raising the tariff wall as the Finance Minister has already done in his budgetary speech. The second is bringing out a legislation against dumping. The third relates to provisions for safeguarding the interests of indigenous products. We may think of reimposing QRs if imports reach a dangerous level,'' he told the House.

Responding to a related query by Vilas Muttemwar (Congress) and Jayashree Banerjee (BJP), the minister outlined the measures taken by the Government to combat the threat of dumping. These included, raising import duties on a number of items in the Budget of 2001-02, subjecting import of all packaged commodities to compliance of all the conditions of the Standards of Weights and Measures (Packaged Commodity) Order, 1977, as applicable on domestic producers, and putting imports of 131 products under compliance of the mandatory Indian quality standards as applicable to domestic goods.