India may appeal against WTO ruling on cotton

India is likely to appeal against the ruling of a World Trade Organisation compliance panel, which concluded that the European Union had complied with an earlier WTO ruling regarding its anti-dumping measures against Indian imports of cotton bed linen.

Senior textiles ministry officials told PTI in New Delhi that the ministry had asked commerce ministry to file an appeal against the ruling.

The decision to appeal against the ruling comes soon after New Delhi's decision to seek setting up of a panel against EU's duty and quota-free access given to Pakistan's textiles under its specialised General System of Preferences regime.

Even as India plans to appeal against the ruling, the EU is understood to have initiated a sunset review to examine the need to continue with the anti-dumping duties on cotton bed linen imports from India.

A WTO panel had on November 29, ruled that the EU had fully complied with the recommendations of a WTO Dispute Settlement Body in March 2001 concerning EU's anti-dumping measures on imports of cotton bed linen.

The implementation panel rejected all claims made by India against the EU's implementation measures.

The panel endorsed EU's approach on a number of technical issues and said, "Imports of bed linen may enter the EC free of any anti-dumping duties" and therefore sees no necessity for EU to explore constructive remedies other than anti-dumping duties vis-a-vis India under a special developing country provision of the WTO's anti-dumping agreement.