U.S. delays removal of bond requirement on seafood imports

The United States administration has sought more time to implement the decision of the dispute settlement body of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to remove the continuous bond requirement (CBR) on import of seafood items from India and Thailand.

According to Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI) sources here the U.S. share in the Indian seafood export basket has dropped to 6.72 per cent in 2007-08 due to the CBR and high rate of anti-dumping duty.

In a tripartite meeting held in Geneva on September last, India had pressed implementation of the decision soon as the CBR had hit the country’s exports to the U.S. However, Washington opposed the move, arguing that they needed more time to implement the decision. The ball is now in WTO’s court and it will decide whether to allow more time to the U.S.

The U.S. administration adopted the slowdown tactics to implement the verdict that was announced on August last year. The cut-off date for the implementation was September, but the U.S. administration had sought further clarification on the decision. In this context, the WTO had convened a consultative meeting of India, Thailand and the U.S., the late issue of SEAI journal says here.

The settlement body had reached a decision on considering the reports of a panel of judges and appellate body in the case filed by India and Thailand concerning the bond requirement. Later, the body had proclaimed that the bond requirement imposed by the US Customs since February, 2005, was illegal and a violation of global trade practices.

This was a major breakthrough for both India and Thailand on the export of warm water shrimp to the U.S. Washington is still reluctant to implement the decision in order to protect its domestic shrimp aquaculture sector.

The strict imposition of CBR had made exports to the U.S. almost impossible and the number of Indian exporters to the U.S. had dropped to 74 from 258 in 2004. India’s export to the U.S. had been hit badly and EU, Japan and China had emerged as the largest importers of Indian seafood items in recent years.

Meanwhile, the European Union has announced the visit of its Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) mission to India to inspect the processing, production and fish landing centres here in November. This visit assumes significance as the EU had blacklisted a number of Asian countries since the rate of rejection of consignments has been on the rise recently.