Tata Teleservices has contested the anti-dumping duty imposed by the Commissioner of Customs, Chennai, for importing network related telecom equipment.

While the Customs authority has taken the view that the equipment falls under the dutiable category, Tata Tele has opposed the findings.

The Finance Ministry had earlier 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 data transmission on optical media.

Tata Tele has contended that the equipment it has imported is non-SDH and used in third generation (3G) mobile network.

To resolve the issue, the Department of Telecom has been asked to determine the category of the equipment imported by the operator.

Definitive duty

The Designated Authority recommended imposition of definitive anti-dumping duty on October 19, 2010. In less than two months, the Revenue Department notified the duty, on December 16, 2010.

The notification spelt out that the anti-dumping duty should be levied for five years from the date of imposition of the provisional duty, that is, December 8, 2009, and it is payable in Indian currency.

Since then, there have been several instances of this duty being imposed on equipment imported into India.

Rate hikes

Earlier, for Chinese producer and exporter Fibrehome Telecommunication Technologies Ltd the provisional anti-dumping duty of 236 per cent of c.i.f. value of imports was hiked to 266 per cent in the definitive (final) anti-dumping duty.

For Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell Co Ltd, the provisional dumping duty of 29 per cent was raised to 45 per cent of c.i.f. value of imports.

>Thomas.thomas@thehindu.co.in

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