Govt to set up committee to monitor steel imports

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian government plans to set up a committee to monitor steel imports to protect domestic consumers from low quality products, an official said here on Monday.
 Anshari Bukhari, the director general of metal, textile machinery and multifarous industries, said on the sidelines of a meeting with House Commission VI that the presence of the committee would be very important to secure domestic steel market with regard to the implementation of ASEAN-China free trade.
The members of the committee would come from the ministries of industry and trade and steel associations as input suppliers for the government.
Anshari said based upon the results of the 10th meeting of the Indonesia-China joint commission in Yogyakarta early in April the two countries agreed to form a joint working group to analyze two-way trade data and information and take actions to boost exports and imports between the two countries especially of iron and steel, footwear, textile and textile products.
China meanwhile has also expressed its readiness to help Indonesian steel producers with a soft loan through the government.
Anshari said domestic steel producers are expecting market security because their products are mostly sold at home, not exported.
"Our steel industries do not need capital assistance and they do not export because their market is at home," he said.
In view of that he said the committee would later monitor imported products from China to prevent possible inflow of low-quality products.
He said the committee would produce policies to assure domestic market security in anticipation against possible inflow of low quality products.
He said domestic market security efforts had already been carried out with plans to impose anti-dumping import tariffs for aluminium meal dish, H and I sections and hot-rolled plate.
He said the anti-dumping committee (KADI) is now still investigating petition on dumping allegations for I and H section products from China and aluminium meal dish from Malaysian and hot-rolled plate from China, Taiwan and Malaysia.
"It is still being investigated by KADI and we hope it will finsih soon so that steel products are protected," he said.
Besides submitting anti-dumping petitions the government is now also preparing implementation of safeguards for zinc wire and wire rope.(*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli
COPYRIGHT © 2012