Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has contested the anti-dumping duty imposed by the Commissioner of Customs, Chennai, for importing network-related telecom equipment from Chinese manufacturers, including Huawei.
While the Customs authority holds that the equipment falls under the dutiable category, BSNL has opposed the findings.
FinMin notification
In 2010, the Finance Ministry had notified the definitive anti-dumping duty on imported synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) transmission equipment from China and Israel, making it costlier for exporters from these countries to supply the telecom equipment used for transmission on optical fibre cables in India. SDH is a standard technology for broadband services on optical fibre cables.
BSNL has contended that the equipment it has imported is non-SDH as it works like a router, which moves data in the form of packets between networks.
In the case of SDH, transmission happens in the form of lasers. To resolve the issue, BSNL has written to the Department of Telecom to determine the category of the equipment imported and instruct the Customs authorities to allow the import.
The anti-dumping duty notification had spelt out that the tax should be levied for five years from the date of imposition of the provisional duty, that is, December 8, 2009, and is payable in Indian currency.
Other instances
Since then, there have been several instances of this duty being imposed on equipment imported into India.
Earlier, Tata Teleservices had faced a similar situation and had to seek DoT’s intervention.