GENEVA, March 25: Developing countries, including Pakistan, are actively using the anti-dumping measures to protect their domestic products against cheap imports.

With coming into effect of the anti-dumping measures in 1995, around 71 WTO-member countries have so far introduced anti-dumping law in their respective countries, said director, information and media relation division of the WTO, Keith Rockwell.

Briefing newsmen at the WTO information programme, organized by Freidric Ebert Stiftung in collaboration with the WTO secretariat, Mr Rockwell said the data available showed that so far around 1,642 investigations of dumping cases were initiated by the member countries to discourage the undue practice in trade.

Of these, most of the cases were initiated by developing countries or transition countries to protect their local production against the low price imports.

Further break-up showed that during the period starting from July 1, 2001 to June 30, 2002, around 309 investigations were initiated by the WTO member countries.

To a question, Mr Rockwell said that developing countries like Pakistan is actively engaged in the process of using the anti-dumping measures to provide protection to the local industry. He said it was encouraging that Pakistan has developed the expertise to carry out the investigations for using the anti-dumping measures and successfully completed investigation in one of the dumping cases.

Officials statistics made available to Dawn showed that 309 investigations were carried out since July 2001 to June 30, 2002. The most active members during this period, in terms of initiations of anti-dumping investigations, were India with 76 investigation cases; the United States 58; Argentina 26; the European Union 23; Australia and Brazil 16 each; Turkey 15; and Mexico and Peru 11 each.

The products exported during the period under review, which were subject to anti-dumping measures includes: around 46 cases of anti-dumping were carried out against Chinese products, which were the highest number in the period. It was followed by products exported from the European Union or member states to around 39 cases; against Indonesia 15 cases; Korea 14; Chinese Taipei 13; Brazil 13,; India 12; Japan, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand and the United States 11 each; and Russia 10 cases.

According to the statistics, till yet India has applied around 24 anti-dumping measures on imports of various goods to provide protection to the local market; the United States applied 16 anti-dumping measures and the EU applied around 14 anti-dumping measures to provide protection to the local products.

Mr Rockwell agreed to a question that there was still room for further amendments in the anti-dumping measure to make it more transparent and less discriminatory against developing countries.

The media spokesman further said that there were demands from around 26 WTO-member countries to introduce amendments in the anti-dumping laws to make is more user-friendly and less discriminatory.

Those who sent the proposals for amendments include: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Hong Kong, China, Israel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Norway, China Taipei, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, the US, India, the EU, Canada, Australia, Morocco, Brazil.

To another question, the spokesman said there was no proposal from either member country to slap the anti-dumping measures, but a demand for making it more transparent.