The dumping of foreign products into Viet Nam’s market has made for unfair competition with local businesses.

Yet exports from Viet Nam face an almost constant threat of anti-dumping actions from other countries. Many are regarded as disguised protectionism.

Experts suggest this perceived imbalance, perhaps even injustice, is due to the loose management practices and an unspecific legal system in Viet Nam. But Nguyen Thanh Bien, Deputy Minister of Trade and Industry, adds that also the threats are also due to the weak awareness and limited knowledge of local entrepreneurs about both local and international laws.
 
Among WTO member nations, most have built strong, complex trade barriers with strict requirements to against the anti-dumping in compliance with WTO terms.

Vietnamese entrepreneurs, on the other hand, often do not thoroughly understand either the anti-dumping requirement of their export destinations or the WTO’s related requirements. So they are easily caught up in the anti-dumping lawsuits.

According to Bui Son Dung, Deputy Director of Viet Nam Competition Administration Department, throughout the economy’s modernization, Viet Nam has still been considered a non-market economy.

As a result, said Mr. Dung, anti-dumping plaintiff nations require overseas pricing methods be used to judge Viet Nam’s prices. Such pricing methods, he explained, are primarily influenced by the living costs, economic polices and costs of supplies, which differ hugely from Viet Nam’s. Hence, Viet Nam’s entrepreneurs are often at a disadvantage, Dung claimed.

Viet Nam, said Mr. Dung, must hasten the diversification of its local market before joining the global market. That means Viet Nam must expand its export markets, not only focusing on existing ones but also penetrate new ones, he explained.

Moreover, he added, Viet Nam’s diversification needs are not limited to markets and products but also raw materials. The need to diversify into new raw materials production derives as well from fellow WTO members’ means of estimating dumping.

For any industry importing a third or more of its raw materials from more “free-market economies”, the normal selling prices of its products can be estimated from its import costs, he explained.

Source: SGGP/TN.