Contemplated safeguard duty

IN trans-national flow of the shared rivers, the lower riparian country becomes the bean to which every garbage from the upper reaches at times of heavy rains and floods is washed off. Alike, in international trade in this globalised world, where fair trade is supposed to be a virtue under the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the poorer countries with no muscle to flex, are targeted by some relatively advanced ones as beans where goods at prices below the costs of production may be dumped. Subsidized exports -- in contravention of the pertinent WTO rule, are also pumped into these beans, which should normally attract punitive countervailing duty. Profuse flow of foreign products in huge quantities also hits these non-muscular poor countries, which either irretrievably injure their existing industries or mar the prospect of their future industrialization.
This country is known to have been for long the victim of subsidized export and dumping of products from a number of countries. It has been also at the receiving end of a profuse flow of some cheap foreign products, which should have been minimized, in accordance with the related WTO rule, with either temporary quantative restrictions or safeguard duty in the defence of local industries and for protecting the scope of industrialization. At least, two local sandpaper industries are known to have either closed down or failed to take off into production due to unfair foreign competition. In this backdrop, a recent press report indicated about a belated government move to make an arrangement for imposition of safeguard duty on foreign products already recorded or would register unusually high inward flows to the detriment of local industries.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has reportedly drafted the rule in this regard. It is said to have proposed to designate the chairman of the Bangladesh Tariff Commission (BTC) as the head of the proposed safeguard authority to conduct quasi-judicial proceeding, as per the relevant WTO rule, essential to determine the applicability of safeguard duty on an imported product giving the opportunity to all parties involved to be heard. As per the commission's founding Act, the proposal is in accord with the law. But the matter of serious consideration is whether the BTC in its existing state is squarely equipped with competent personnel, trained in the particular line, to deal expertly with the relevant issue or issues. Its chairman came in and left one after another, on transfer, too frequently during the last several years. The likely resultant void in competence, usually acquired at senior levels through learning by doing, may be incompatible with the serious job proposed to be assigned to the body.
If the government has strongly resolved to act on trade remedial measures against possible dumping and subsidized exports by some countries -- a few of which are also big players on the global scene -- and to take the safeguard measure to save local industries, it has to take some measured preparatory steps. The BTC should be strengthened with competent manpower, versatile on trade rules, for being able to perform well as the quasi-judicial safeguard, anti-dumping and countervailing authority. Its other possible internal problems should be also identified and resolved to enable it to stand firmly as a united body for doing the serious job.
The government should wisely decide whether trade issues would be dealt with, independent of diplomatic and other considerations. A clear decision in this respect will assure the authority about its degree of independence for initiating an investigation upon complaint by local industries or suo motto. Else, the proposed safeguard authority, or whatever it would be called, will oscillate between boldness and hesitation while seeking to decide whether to initiate an investigation in the discharge of its assigned function as a quasi-judicial body for upholding the legitimate national interests.