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Indonesia lodges complaint with WTO over US biodiesel anti-dumping duties
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Trade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita (right) speaks at a meeting in Nusa Dua, Bali, recently as Investment Coordinating Board head Thomas Lembong listens. (Antara/Nyoman Budhiana)
T
rade Minister Enggartiasto Lukita has said the government has already submitted a complaint to the WTO over a petition issued by the US Department of Commerce and the US International Trade Commission to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties on imports of biodiesel from Indonesia.
“Of course we feel that this is a disadvantage for us. We have already lodged our complaints with the WTO,” he said at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Jakarta on Monday.
The petition to apply such duties in the US was submitted by the US-based National Biodiesel Board (NBB). The NBB has followed the European Union (EU), which in 2013 increased duties from 8.8 percent to 20.5 percent for Indonesian producers and between 22 percent and 25.7 percent for Argentine producers, to apply for five years in both cases.
(Read also: Multilateral trade preferred over bilateral, plurilateral: WTO)
Indonesia sold US$982.52 million worth of biodiesel to the 28 member bloc in 2012, a year before the duties were erected. Sales dropped to about half in 2013 after the tariffs were imposed.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s annual biodiesel exports to the US surged by 117 percent in the 2014-2016 period to 350,176 tons of biodiesel per year, or 93.75 percent of Indonesia’s total biodiesel exports last year. (bbn)
