New Delhi, June 29: The imposition of a definitive anti-dumping duty on ‘USB Flash Drives’ imported from China and Taiwan effective from May 23rd, 2015 in India, has impacted the import of pen drives to India and also businesses of players like Transcend. Now, the company is toying with a new alternative to continue its flash-based pen drives business in India.
Previously, Transcend was importing these pen drives to India from its factories located in Taipei and China, but with sudden increase in the anti-dumping duties, Transcend is facing difficulties to continue to import from China.
Moreover, it is also not in a view to import from other countries like Korea, Philippines and Malaysia, which are free from fee anti-dumping duties. But as per the sources, brands like HP and Sandisk are likely to shift imports of pen drives from China to other countries.
The Directorate General Of Anti-Dumping & Allied Duties report(DGAD) has released the investigation report and proposes a mind-boggling Anti-dumping Duty @$3.12 (Rs 199.01) per piece and @$3.06 (Rs 195.18) per piece irrespective of capacity of USB flash drives manufactured in China and Taiwan respectively.
The investigation period was CY 2012. At current prices of 4GB and 8GB products this duty represents apex 125% to 140% over the FOB or freight on board prices.
The anti-dumping duty will be valid for a period of five years.
Speaking exclusive to Channeltimes, Hugo Lee, Sales Manager and Patrick Lu, Account Manager of Transcend Information said, “With the new introduction of Anti Dumping Duties, we have stopped importing our pen drives to India, rather we are looking for new plans to continue the supply. We see India has a huge demand for high capacities pen drives, we can’t miss this opportunities.”
Lee said, “We are looking at various options like starting the small scale manufacturing of pen drives in India or local OEMs partnership so that we continue to remain a leading player in the flash drives business.”
Lu mentioned, “There are several ways we are looking at to retain our pen drive business in India. As India is betting big on local manufacturing and make In India project, we see local manufacturing of pen drive is a viable solution.”
At the same time, the company is introducing a new range of consumer products like Car Video recorders, Apple solutions and SSDs. Presently, pen drives contributes 30% of the business in India.
As per Transcend, six million pen drives get imported per quarter, which means 2 million in a month. With a high level of duties and brand strength of impacted vendors will immediately result in Grey imports and counterfeiting.