ITAC chief commissioner Siyabulela Tsengiwe said anti-dumping measures often took too long to come into effect, and the same was true for implementing increases or reductions in import tariffs. He said ITAC revised its timelines for finalising its anti-dumping and other trade-remedy investigations, which resulted in significantly shorter completion periods – on average 10 months from date of initiation.
“The time frames for conducting ordinary tariff investigations were reduced from 12 to nine months and to four months for vulnerable industries.”Tsengiwe said tariff setting for agricultural products was difficult as one must consider the profitability of farmers, the price ramifications down the value chain and price-raising effects for consumers, especially the poor.
While ITAC has a range of measures available to assist industries and agricultural concerns that have competition from unfairly priced dumped imports or a surge in import volumes, they weren’t being fully used by the agricultural sector, he added. “We’ve had information-sharing sessions with associations in the agricultural sector to explain these measures.”
