Brazil has extended the payment of an extra tariff on Chinese imported garlic for five years, which will benefit both the Brazilian garlic producers and the Argentine producers in Mendoza.
The public and private sectors of the Argentine province and Brazil conducted an important commercial intelligence job within China's production system to confirm that the firms in that country carried out garlic transactions at very low costs, preventing fair trade.
The results of the consultancy work were overwhelming and that documentation was key for the Brazilian judicial system to take this measure.
The judicial decision was celebrated by the authorities of the Ministry of Economy, Infrastructure, and Energy of Mendoza and ProMendoza, the Association of Garlic, Onion and Related Producers, Packers, and Exporters of the Province of Mendoza (Asocamen), and the Association of Garlic Producers of Brazil (Anapa).
The anti-dumping duty allows countries to safeguard their productions when, for various reasons, and in some cases with undercover subsidies, the price in the international market is lower than the sales value in the domestic market.
The entities work to support the application of anti-dumping measures to the entry of Chinese garlic in Brazil and prevent the request for exceptions to the application of Mercosur's common external tariff.
A recent judicial ruling forced the Federal Revenue (the Brazilian AFIP) to report the name, CNPJ (CUIT) and process number of the request to exempt the companies that import Chinese garlic without paying anti-dumping duty.
The anti-dumping duty that Brazilian companies pay to import Chinese garlic is $ 7.80 per box of 10 kilograms. In addition, importers must pay a 35% import duty, as the product comes from a country that is not part of Mercosur.
"The sum of these two extra charges for Chinese garlic allows Brazilian exporters and Brazilian garlic producers to obtain a price for their product that will reasonably make the activity sustainable in face of the very low prices of garlic from China, a country that sets the international price of this product thanks to the overwhelming amount of garlic they export," the Ministry of Economy highlighted. ■