Anti-dumping legislation in parliament next month: Rishad

The much awaited anti-dumping legislation has been cleared by the Attorney General and is ready to be presented to parliament, the country’s Industry and Commerce Minister Rishad Bathiudeen said.
 “…we are planning to present the draft Anti-Dumping Bill to the Parliament in the coming two-three weeks,” said the minister at the 26th Annual General Meeting of the Industry Association of Sri Lanka (IASL) held this week in Colombo. 

Sri Lanka is gearing to enter into free trade pacts with China, Bangladesh, Singapore, Vietnam, and Malaysia and also to expand its existing trade deal with India. 

But some local industrialists have shown much opposition to this move. They fear that such trade pacts could result in the local market being flooded with cheap imported goods, with which they cannot compete.

“We like to mention that any further liberation of trade must be done after few basic safeguards like anti-dumping legislation and lowering of duties of raw materials for local manufacture of finished products,” IASL Chairman Dinesh Dharmadasa said at the event.

New trade deals always create winners and losers and it’s the duty of the government to mitigate the pain of the losers through various safety nets. 

“Our industries appear to be worried about impacts of FTAs and dumping.  The unity government will not enter into such agreements without consulting local industries and without protecting them first,” Minister Bathiudeen said responding to Dharmadasa.