The Vietnamese Government has protested the US Department of Commerce (DOC)-conducted investigations into countervailing duty on imports of products from Vietnam while considering the country as a non-market economy, the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s Competitiveness Department said.

According to a preliminary decision announced on Aug. 31, after conducting its first countervailing duty investigations relating to Vietnam’s retail polyethylene carrier bags (plastic bags), the DOC concluded that there is subsidisation of the item.

The three mandatory respondents Advance Polybag, Chin Sheng Co. Ltd. and Fotai Vietnam Enterprise Corp., were imposed with anti-subsidy duties of 0.2 percent, 1.69 percent and 4.25 percent, respectively. Other exporters from Vietnam received a preliminary subsidy rate of 2.97 percent.

The DOC investigation was not in line with the previous ruling issued by the US Federal Court of Appeals, Director of the Competitiveness Department Bach Van Mung told Vietnam News Agency (VNA) on Sept. 15.

Based on documents, data and arguments given by the Vietnamese government and the three defendants, 16 of Vietnam’s 20 groups of programmes and policies accused of subsidisation were removed from the scope of investigations by DOC, Mung said.

The programmes were ended when Vietnam joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and in fact, they are not applied to any of the mandatory respondents.

The DOC’s decision showed that the Vietnamese government always abides by its commitments in international treaties and protects the legal rights and benefits of businesses in international trade activities, creating a healthy and reliable business and investment environment in Vietnam, Mung added.

Though the DOC’s preliminary decision partly reflected that the operations of Vietnam’s PE bag exporters are not subsidised by the government, Vietnam needs to make greater efforts to contest the conclusion and provide more evidence to counter inaccurate points outlined in the decision, Mung said.

The move aims to conclude that “the Vietnamese government does not subsidise exporters, and even if it did, the subsidised rate is not worth considering and does not distort trade equality,” he stressed.

The decision obviously will have a “negative impact” on the export of Vietnamese PE bags and even cause “remarkable risk” for both Vietnamese exporters and US importers, the official said.

He also recommended exporters diversify their products and markets, devise long-term business strategies and invest in technology to minimise the risk of the dumping and anti-subsidy lawsuits of importing countries.

Also, Vietnamese exporters need to learn about their markets as well as their legal regulations to actively cope with unexpected issues, Mung added./.