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RIYADH : Saudi petrochemicals producers said on Saturday they would seek duties on imports from China after Beijing began a dumping probe on petrochemical products from Saudi Arabia and three other countries.
Abdulrahman al-Zamil, chairman of the Council of Saudi Chambers, said China had no grounds to pursue the dumping investigation on imports of methanol and butanediol (BDO) it launched in late June.
"We do not subsidise our exporters" of petrochemicals, he told a news conference.
"This is not fair for two major partners," he said, referring to China and Saudi Arabia's mostly duty-free bilateral trade, which surpassed 40 billion dollars in 2008, according to SABB bank.
Zamil told reporters Saudi exporters feared China would levy punitive tariffs on the two products from Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Zealand while a lengthy investigation goes on at the request of several Chinese producers.
"The damage will take place while they are studying it for one, two, even 100 years, " he said.
Methanol and BDO make up between 10 and 15 percent of Saudi Arabia's two billion dollars in annual petrochemicals exports to China, according to Zamil.
He said the group was asking the Saudi government to place tariffs on industrial imports from China in return.
"The Chinese are dumping on our market," he said.
"We want our government ... to apply the same principles, the same customs duties" that the Chinese are placing on Saudi goods, he said.
- AFP /ls
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