Bicycle Exporters Slapped with Tariffs

News by Khmer Times/Va Sonyka

Locally-assembled bicycles for sale on a street in central Phnom Penh. KT Photo: Fabien Mouret

PHNOM PENH (Khmer Times) – The European Commission has imposed a 48.5 percent import tariff on the shipments of Cambodian bicycle exporters it accuses of flooding the European Union market with low-cost, Chinese-manufactured bicycles.

The anti-dumping duty was imposed on bicycles shipped to the EU from Cambodia, Pakistan and the Philippines after a nine-month investigation found that many bicycles were manufactured in China, but transshipped via these countries to circumvent the EU’s duties on bicycles originating in China.

Cambodia, which benefits from the duty-free entry of its goods to the European Union under the Everything But Arms scheme, has risen to become the second-largest exporter of bicycles to the EU after Taiwan. Bicycle exports increased from about 500,000 units in 2011 to about 1.4 million units in the year ending August 2014, according to the Commission’s investigation report.

While the Commission recognized that part of the increase was due to genuine local manufacture, its investigation revealed that much of it was the result of exporters who had “no economic justification” for establishing a presence in Cambodia other than to circumvent duties on Chinese-made bikes.

The Commission excluded three Cambodian companies – A&J, Smart Tech and Speedtech Industrial – from the anti-dumping duty in return for their cooperation with investigators and no evidence of Chinese sourcing. Tariffs were explicitly imposed on two others – Asia Leader International and Opaltech.

The investigation revealed a pattern of moving bicycle assembly operations from one country to another for the purpose of circumventing the EU’s anti-dumping duty on Chinese bikes.

source: http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/11976/bicycle-exporters-slapped-with-tariffs/