The Indian solar manufacturers have been pushing the Indian government hard, to impose anti-dumping duties
on imports of Chinese and USA made solar cells and modules for a long
time now. However, a very strong lobby of solar developers and utilities
have prevented such an outcome till now. The Indian solar producer
lobby is quite weak with few members in comparison to the large power
producers. However, the manufacturers have been pressing the case hard,
taking strength from the fact that USA has imposed big duties on Chinese imports of solar panels and even Europe has imposed a volume and price quota.
Their
complaints have also been bolstered by USA’s unreasonable trade stance
on the Indian solar policy to support the local industry. Despite India
being swamped by solar panel imports especially from First Solar (FSLR),
the USA government is taking India to the WTO for protecting its local
industry. Not a very great case given that most Indian solar panel
producers are flirting with bankruptcies after racking up massive
losses. Moser Baer, Vikram Solar, IndoSolar, Tata Power etc. have been running their factories at very low utilization.
The Directorate General of Anti-Dumping (DGAD) has found that a case exists against foreign producers of solar cells for dumping their products in India. There are reports that 50-60% duties may be imposed on imports from Taiwan, Malaysia and USA while 100-110% duty will be imposed on China.
While I think that the actual duties imposed might be less, there is a
case by the Indian government to impose those duties to negate the
negative USA trade policies towards India. It can be used as a
bargaining chip to gain more concessions from foreign producers. They
could be incentivized to set up factories in India through JVs. The new
government to be set up will set the future direction of India’s energy and solar policy soon,
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