The Australian Customs and Border Protection Service (CBPS) has announced the extension of the time limit of the antidumping (AD) duty investigations on certain structural hollow steel sections from China and Malaysia.
On December 18, 2008, the CBPS published two notices concerning the initiation of an investigation into the alleged dumping and subsidization of certain hollow structural sections imported from China and the alleged dumping of the same product from Malaysia; and also a review of the antidumping measures applying to non-exempt exporters of the subject product from China.
The initiation in question noticed that the statements of essential facts for the investigation and the review would be placed by April 7, 2009.
In view of the large number of suppliers, the CBPS undertook a selection exercise in respect of the exporters in China. This process resulted in delays in the CBPS's provision questionnaires to the appropriate parties. Further, the Chinese government and certain exporters were granted the extensions to the deadline for lodging responses to questionnaires because of the size and complexity of the data sets required by the CBPS. Consequently, the CBPS requested an extension of the deadline for the publication of the statements of essential facts.
Therefore, Australia's minister of home affairs has extended the deadline for the publication of the statement of the essential facts no later than July 27, 2009.