India Imposes 25% Safeguard Duty on Solar Imports

Finance ministry has imposed a safeguard duty of 25 percent on the imports from July 30, 2018 to July 29, 2019 and a gradually reduced rate of 20 percent from July 30, 2019 to January 29, 2020 and 15 percent from January 30, 2020 to July 29, 2020.

Keeping in view the interests of the domestic solar manufacturers, Indian Government imposed long awaited safeguard duty on imports of solar equipment from China and Malaysia for two years.

The safeguard duty on the imports is imposed following recommendations from the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) of the commerce ministry.

The finance ministry has imposed a safeguard duty of 25 percent on the imports from July 30, 2018 to July 29, 2019 and a gradually reduced rate of 20 percent from July 30, 2019 to January 29, 2020 and 15 percent from January 30, 2020 to July 29, 2020.

Also, impose of safeguard duty on imports came on the back of its investigations which concluded that high numbers of solar imports from has caused ‘severe injury’ to the domestic producers.

Further, the authorities were pushed upon by the imports of the solar cells which jumped to 9,790 MW in 2017-18 from 1,275 MW in 2014-15.

The safeguard duty is also said to be a result of an application filed on December 5, 2017 by the Indian Solar Manufacturers Association (ISMA) which included seriously sought imposition of safeguard duty on the imports. The application was filed mainly by the top five Indian solar manufacturers.

As a result of the increased imports, solar manufacturing facilities in India were left unproductive and the industry faced heavy losses.

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