The GCC : No Safeguard Measure on Steel Imports

 
   Riyadh - GCC's ministerial committee has decided not to apply a safeguard measure on steel imports, according to an announcement published yesterday.   

Al Armouti represented various exporting companies in the investigation.

In the investigation, which was initiated in October 2019 and finalised in May 2021; Al Armouti argued and demonstrated in the written submissions and the public hearing that the participating GCC industries were not representative of the whole GCC industry producing like products, hence injury data used was not representative of the situation and performance of GCC's industry. 

As regards economic developments,  Al Armouti argued that the economic events which GCC's participating industry alleged to have led to the increase of steel imports into the GCC market were actually 'foreseen' contrary to the requirements of article 19 of the GATT 1994.

Also, some of the developments envisaged by the GCC industries, such as deterioration of currency value in some exporting countries, indicated that injury of the GCC industry should have been examined under anti-dumping conditions from certain countries, rather than safeguards conditions from all exporting countries.

Al Armouti also demonstrated that the requirements of article 19 of the GATT Agreement were not satisfied, especially that no analysis was made to show that the increase in imports was a direct result of GCC countries' accession to the WTO. 

Regarding injury, Al Armouti demonstrated that the increase in imports did not occur as import volume data did not show that increase in imports was sharp, sudden, significant, or recent, whether in absolute or relative terms. 

Al Armouti also contended that injury conditions required by the Unified Law and the Safeguards agreement pertaining, production, sales, productivity, market share, capacity utilisation, profits/losses, inventory and labour did not show that the GCC industry was suffering serious injury while many of these factors showed improvement during the period of investigation (POI), and that the data provided by the authority in this regard was not recent and did not allow for qualitative and fair analysis. As for causality, Al Armouti demonstrated the non coincidence or correlation between import volumes data and injury data, which disregarded the existence of causality between the alleged increase in imports and alleged serious injury of the GCC industry.  

Also, Al Armouti shed light on other injury factors that may had an impact on GCC industries apart from imports, such as the fierce competition between GCC industries, and the unfair competition environments between GCC industries across GCC markets. 

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