EC considers imposing AD measures against Ukrainian seamless pipes

The European Commission (EC) had disclosed the document with planned antidumping measures against imports of seamless pipes from Ukraine. The final decision is intended to be taken, according the preliminary data, until May 1; the latest date of enforcement is June 30 of the current year. The antidumping investigation against Ukraine's seamless pipe imports was initiated on March 31, 2005, upon the petitions filed by Austrian Voestalpine Tubula, French Vallourec & Mannesmann, German Benteler Stahl/Rohr GmbH, V&M-Deutschland GmbH, Italian Dalmine S.p.a and Spanish Tubos Reunidos, which in total controlled 67 percent of pipe production market in 2004. The EC is to establish the duties in the amount of 27-28.2 percent for a five-year period, depending on the producers. Thus, the import duty for Nijnii-Dneprovsk Tube Plant and Niko-Tube (Cooperation Interpipe) would be 27 percent, while for YuTiST (PKP Slatprom), it would be 28.2 percent. These three enterprises supplied approximately 80 percent of entire Ukraine's pipe imports to EU. The import duty for Dnepropetrovsk Tube Plant (Corporation ISD) would be much less, at 12 percent. In 2005, Ukraine supplied the EU with about 100,000 tons of seamless pipes. If the above measures to be accepted, Ukraine will suffer considerable losses, that is, according to expert estimates about $100 million. The Ukrainian government is attempting to negotiate with the EC to cancel the antidumping measures. The Acting Minister of Economy, Arseniy Yatsenuk, announced his plans to pay an official visit to Brussels on 20 March to discuss this problem. The main argument put forward by the Ukrainian government in favor of cancellation of antidumping measures against Ukrainian seamless pipe on the EU market is that the price of same products of Russian origin, sold in the European market, is 22 percent cheaper than the Ukrainian origin products. In addition, Yatsenuk stated that Ukraine production was never a competitor of the highly qualitative European pipes. Due to that, the measures to be imposed by the EC will not bring desirable results, and Ukrainian origin products would only be replaced completely by Chinese seamless pipes, which have already started to conquest the European market.