Australia and China: Australian barley sector gets another fortnight to defend anti-dumping allegations

The Australian barley sector will have another fortnight to put together submissions for the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to defend anti-dumping allegations lodged by a Chinese government department, the North Queensland Register reported on January 28.

Submissions were due to close two months after the investigation was launched, however Tony Russell, executive manager of the Grains Industry Market Access Forum (GIMAF) confirmed the closing date for submissions was now February 11.

The case centres on allegations from the China Chamber of International Commerce that Australian barley was dumped in the Chinese market at prices below world values between 2014 and 2017, a claim the Australian industry strongly denies.

Mr Russell said his organisation, together with Grain Trade Australia (GTA) had been spearheading a response.

“The industry has been busy working together, all the individual traders named in the initial complaint are putting in submissions while we have been working to provide a technical response to build and provide good analysis of the situation to show the sales were clearly at world values,” Mr Russell said.

“We’ll look at barley sales, both to China and other destinations and how the trade has operated in that time, I think when all the information is overlaid it will be clear to see there was no dumping.”

The centre of the Chinese claim is that domestic Chinese barley prices fell by a third in the period where they allege the dumping however that was also largely mirrored in world prices over the same period.

Under regulations, China is allowed to implement preliminary duties on Australian barley exports to China 60 days after the claim was launched, which was in late November.

At present, the tensions are not harming barley returns, due to the strong Australian domestic market, but Mr Rusell said the industry wanted a resolution as soon as possible.

“China is our biggest international customer so it is obvious we need this cleared up as soon as possible.”

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