Antidumping duties planned for flour

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Minister of Industry and Trade Rini Soewandi unveiled on Monday plans to impose antidumping duties on imported wheat flour from Australia, the European Union (EU) and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

"After considering input from several parties, we plan to impose antidumping duties on the commodity amounting to 20 percent of the recommendation by the Indonesian Antidumping Committee (KADI)," Rini told legislators during a meeting with House of Representatives Commission V for trade and industry.

Late last year, KADI proposed antidumping duties of between 5 percent to 35 percent on wheat flour imported from those countries, compared to zero percent at present.

The proposal, however, was rejected by Rini in December 2001 due to high demand at home amid end-of-year festivities.

Rini said that the planned antidumping duties on imported flour from the EU would be between 4 percent and 7 percent, compared with KADI's recommendation of 21 percent to 35 percent.

Antidumping duties on flour from Australia are proposed at between 1 percent and 6 percent, while duties on flour from UAE at between 2 percent and 6 percent.

The plan will be presented to Minister of Finance Boediono for approval.

Both legislators and the Indonesian Wheat and Flour Producers Association (Aptindo) have repeatedly called on the government to impose antidumping duties to protect local flour mills.

There are four flour mills in the country, namely PT Bogasari Flour Mills, PT Sriboga Ratu Raya, PT Pangan Mas and PT Berdikari.

The giant Bogasari, which is a unit of publicly listed food manufacturer PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, has been the most aggressive in complaining about the dumping practices of the overseas flour producers.

It claimed its market share at home had decreased to 70 percent last year from almost 90 percent in previous years.

The company warned that any delay in imposing antidumping duties would encourage other overseas flour producers, especially from India and China, to flood the local market and as such further hurt local mills.