WTO panel rules against India in dispute against EU, Japan, Taiwan; says global trading rules violated

A World Trade Organisation panel on Monday ruled that India violated global trading rules in a dispute against the European Union, Japan and Taiwan. The case pertains to import duties for a wide range of products. 

The WTO panel recommended India to bring such measures into conformity with its obligations. 

In 2019 the EU, Japan and Taiwan had challenged the import duties on certain IT products. The EU had challenged India’s introduction of import duties between 7.5 per cent and 20 per cent for products such as mobile phones, mobile phone components and accessories, line telephone handsets, base stations, static converters or electric wires and cables. The EU deemed these duties a direct breach of WTO rules, and argued that India was obliged under the WTO commitments to apply a zero-duty rate to such products.

The European Commission said that up to 600 million euros of its exports were directly affected by India's tariffs on an annual basis. It said that the impact on European companies that also export from other countries to India is considerably higher. 

“In its panel ruling, the WTO upheld all EU claims against India and found that India's tariffs of up to 20 per cent on certain ICT products, such as mobile phones, were not in line with its WTO commitments, and thus are illegal,” stated the European Commission in a statement, adding that the tariffs could not be justified by any of the reasons India brought forth in this case. 

“India could not invoke the Information and Technology Agreement (ITA) to escape the commitments made in its WTO schedule, nor limit its zero-duty commitment to products that existed at the time of this commitment and exclude more recent technological products falling under the same tariff line. The panel also confirmed that no mistake was committed when determining India's tariff commitments, including when the tariff lines nomenclatures were updated, and refused to examine India's request to rectify its tariff commitments,” it said. 

It is unclear if India would appeal against the ruling as of now. 

While the panel largely backed the complaints against India, it rejected Japan’s claims that India’s customs notifications lacked ‘predictability’. 

(With Reuters inputs)

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