CBSA official describes bell pepper import re-investigation as routine

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

The Canada Border Services Agency is having another look at the minimum selling price and export prices of greenhouse bell peppers imported into Canada from The Netherlands.

The agency’s re-investigation is part of its ongoing enforcement of the Canadian International Trade Tribunal’s finding issued in October 2010 that greenhouse bell peppers from The Netherlands threatened to injure Ontario growers. The tribunal applied an anti-dumping duty of 193 per cent of the export price on Dutch greenhouse bell pepper imports. The duty remains in place for five years from the date it was first implemented in 2010. As part of that investigation, the border services agency found that 99.4 per cent of the greenhouse bell peppers from The Netherlands were dumped in 2009.

The Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers Association requested the initial investigation in January 2010. But no one person or group requested the re-investigation says Esme Bailey, border services agency senior media relations spokesperson, by email. The agency’s re-investigation is part of its normal policy on re-investigations.

George Gilvesy, general manager of the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, says there isn’t any new greenhouse pepper dumping from The Netherlands occurring. The re-investigation hasn’t been triggered by anything “in particular other than normal process by the Canada Border Services Agency, as I understand it.”

Bailey says the re-investigation gives pepper exporters an opportunity to provide the agency with necessary information to establish “normal values” for their products. She described a normal value as a “floor or minimum selling price.”

If exporters sell their goods to Canada at prices equal to or above their normal value, anti-dumping duties don’t apply, she says.

At the start of the investigation, which will conclude by Jan. 23, 2014, the agency sent out a request for information to 37 exporters and vendors of Dutch greenhouse bell peppers, Bailey says. Completed forms are due by Nov. 1.

If the information is incomplete or the exporter doesn’t allow the agency to verify data, the 193 per cent anti-dumping duties are applied. In addition, exporters that don’t participate in the re-investigation will continue having anti-dumping duties applied to their shipments, Bailey says.

The agency also sent out the request for information forms to importers and they are due by Oct. 16.

Bailey says the Canadian Trade Tribunal will do an expiry review of the pepper anti-dumping duty in early 2015. BF