HÀ NỘI — The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) has advised Vietnamese exporters to strictly abide by regulations related to products’ origin.

This comes as many members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have strengthened trade safeguard tools to protect their domestic industries.

According to the Trade Remedies Authorities of Việt Nam under the MoIT, in nearly six months from May to October of 2018, the world’s 20 largest advanced and emerging economies (G20) launched 85 trade defence cases, including 63 anti-dumping cases, 19 anti-subsidy cases and three self-defence cases.

To ensure the effectiveness of trade remedies, the countries have kept a close eye on imports to uncover fraud.

Investigations into trade remedy avoidance against Vietnamese enterprises also increased.

With a large scale of export turnover of US$245 billion, 2018 continued to be the record year of trade safeguards for exported goods from Việt Nam.

As of December 2018, 19 investigations were launched on export products from Việt Nam, mostly steel, fibre, household appliances and electronics.

Some outstanding lawsuits in the past year such as the European Union’s (EU) temporary safeguard measures in the investigation with some imported steel products.

These include Việt Nam’s cold-rolled and non-alloy steel; sheet metal and cold rolled stainless steel sheets and bars.

The US Department of Commerce initiated an anti-dumping investigation and countervailing duties on corrosion-resistant steel products imported from Việt Nam due to suspicion of tax evasion.

The Canadian Border Service Agency (CBSA) also initiated a dumping investigation on a number of carbon welded steel pipe products originating or imported from Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Việt Nam.

The Ministry of Industry and International Trade Malaysia (MITI) initiated a dumping investigation on a number of alloyed or non-alloyed flat iron or galvanised steel products originating from or imported from Việt Nam.

Việt Nam is the country that features most in anti-dumping lawsuits in the US, following by India, Turkey, Australia, EU, Canada and Brazil.

Vietnamese products facing high risks of investigation are plywood exported to the US as well as truck and bus tyres to the Europe.  

Most cases came to the conclusion that evasive behaviours exist and then trade remedies were applied.

As the US and some other countries allow importers to self-declare and self-certify the origin of goods, the possibility of fraud occurs outside the territory of Việt Nam.

In that context, the MoIT and the Việt Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) have sought to tighten the issuance of origin certificates, with special attention on products with high risk of fake Vietnamese origin certificates being used.

The MoIT has also worked with the Ministry of Finance to watch for abnormal signs in exports to some markets to avoiding damaging Việt Nam’s prestige and the interests of exporters.

The MoIT also asked for businesses’ help in monitoring the market and providing information in violation cases. — VNS