Local flour mills will seek for an extension of the three-year anti-dumping duty on wheat flour from Turkey on fears exporters from that country will return to their dumping practice should the anti-dumping duty be allowed to expire in October this year.
Ric Pinca, executive director the Philippine Association of Flour Millers (PAFMIL) said in a statement yesterday recent developments have given Turkey nearly unhampered access to low-cost Ukrainian wheat. Due to the Russia-Ukraine war, all Ukrainian wheat exports have to go through Turkey for inspection before proceeding to the importing countries.
Pinca said this provides Turkey an opportunity to export flour using cheap Ukrainian wheat.
The Philippines imports 95 percent of its milling wheat from the United States. Other Philippine wheat sources are Canada and Australia.
Pinca said the millers will file their appeal next month.
This will be the third anti- dumping petition to be made by the local flour millers led by PAFMIL against Turkish flour millers. The first petition was in 2014 which the Tariff Commission (TC) approved a year later, and imposed a five-year anti-dumping duty against 17 Turkish flour millers with the punitive duties ranging from 2.87 percent to 16.9 percent.
Between 2008 and 2012, Turkish flour export to the Philippines soared by 938.9 percent. In 2012, Turkey captured 9 percent of the local flour market.
The second petition was approved by the TC on September 2020, for three years.
Seventeen Turkish flour millers were slapped with anti- dumping duties of 2.87 percent to 29.57 percent.
These dumping duties were on top of the seven percent most favored nation import duties for non-Asean and Australia-New Zealand with which the Philippines has multi-lateral trade agreements.
