VietNamNet Bridge – Vietnamese enterprises raised three trade remedy lawsuits against foreign exporters, while they were the defendants in a lot of lawsuits raised by foreign importers.

Posco VST and Inox Hoa Binh have filed for the anti-dumping lawsuit against the foreign exporters from China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan, which shows that domestic enterprises have begun thinking of using “weapon” to protect themselves.

Though the legal framework on the trade remedy has been existing for the last 10 years already, only 3 lawsuits of this kind have been raised so far. Dinh Thi My Loan, Chair of the Trade Remedy Consultancy Council of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), has noted that Vietnamese enterprises still do not know how to use the legal framework to protect themselves. In other words, Loan said, “they have gun but they don’t know how to use it.”

While Vietnam has only raised 3 trade remedy lawsuits so far, by 2011, Indonesia had conducted 89 anti-dumping investigation cases, while Thailand 56.

VCCI has found out that the five most popular categories of products imported to Vietnam, including electric equipments, electronics, machinery, fuel, steel and plastics have been the subjects in many anti-dumping lawsuits in other markets in the world.

“It is highly possible that many of the import products have been dumped in Vietnam, or they have been subsidized to penetrate the Vietnamese market and cause losses to Vietnamese industries,” Loan said.

A report of WTO showed that the 10 biggest plaintiffs in the anti-dumping lawsuits include China, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the US, Japan and Indonesia, which all are the big exporters to Vietnam.

Loan said no one can be sure the foreign exporters don’t dump their products or compete unhealthily in Vietnam. However, since Vietnamese businesses lack information, they cannot apply necessary measures to protect themselves.

Nguyen Thi Dung from Bluescope Steel admitted that the enterprise had not cared much about trade remedies until one day when it met problems which forced it to learn more about the issue.

In general, Vietnamese enterprises have not been ready for the trade remedies, lacking experiences. Especially, they complained that it was very difficult to get information from competent agencies.

Dinh Huy Tam, Secretary General of the Vietnam Steel Association (VSA), also complained that enterprises have to take “roundabout route” to access the statistics of the General Department of Customs.

Loan has confirmed that in the last 67 cases where Vietnamese enterprises were the defendants, it was very difficult to access the statistics. In some cases, Vietnam, the defendant, had to use the statistics presented by the plaintiffs.

“Therefore, we strongly recommend that statistics need to be provided to enterprises, associations and the Competition Administration Department (CAD), Loan suggested.

Le Sy Giang, Deputy Head of the CAD’s Trade Remedies Division, also said that Vietnam has the legitimate right of applying legal instruments to protect itself. Anti-dumping lawsuits should be raised against the foreign businessmen who dump in the Vietnamese market. Meanwhile, other measures such as technical barriers and safeguard measures could be used in case of the massive imports, trade frauds or low quality imports.

VSA believes that installing technical barriers should be the first measures to be taken immediately to prevent low quality products, including the Chinese steel imports which have come to Vietnam in masses recently.

DNSG