Aluminium industry demands govt not to impose anti-dumping duty on import of Caustic Soda

as unlike other industries,it cannot pass through the burden of escalated cost to the end consumers as the global Aluminium prices are governed by London Metal Exchange," AAI said.

The AAI informs that caustic soda imports in India are already restricted through various tariff and non-tariff barriers such as compulsory use of Standard Mark under a licence from the BIS as per Bureau of Indian Standard and conformity to BIS Standards. Post imposition of mandatory BIS license for Caustic Soda imports, almost 95 per cent of foreign Caustic Soda producers are already eliminated because they have not acquired the requisite BIS license for exporting Caustic Soda to India.

The BIS Standards are thus a significant non-tariff trade barrier in place to safeguard the domestic Caustic Soda industry and reduce imports of Caustic Soda based on the quality standards, AAI said.

The association pointed out that India's Caustic Soda production and consumption centres are in different regions. Majority of India's domestic production of Caustic Soda (Non-Captive) is in the Western region of the country, mainly in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.

"This creates a huge logistics challenge resulting in high freight costs for transportation from western to eastern regions along with unavailability of sufficient rakes and network congestions. The transportation through road mode is also not feasible over such long distances. As a result, the domestic suppliers have concentrated their supplies in the geographies near to their plant location," AAI said.