On May 22, India’s Ministry of Commerce & Industry issued a statement that it will impose anti-dumping duties on solar products imported from China, US. Taiwan and Malaysia. In particular, it recommends imposing US$0.11/watt in duties on First Solar products, while the other manufacturers will be subject to duties between US$0.48/watt and US$0.81/watt.

 

"Being Asia’s third largest PV market after China and Japan, India targets to install 1.7GW of solar power in 2014. India’s PV cell capacity is around 1GW, representing only a half of its PV module capacity (2GW). This means that the nation’s PV industry strongly relies on imported PV cells,” said Corrine Lin, EnergyTrend analyst. If India decides to impose anti-dumping duties on products from the aforementioned four countries, the domestic capacity will face a challenge of being unable to satisfy its 2GW module demand. Furthermore, India cannot import enough PV products from other countries to support its demand. These factors will certainly raise the costs of PV installations, causing negative effects on its rapidly growing PV market.

 

Lin further indicates that Taiwanese manufacturers shipped about 75MW of PV cells to India in 2013, representing only 1.2% of all cell exports. In the first quarter of 2014, the rate climbed moderately to 2.1%. However, the gross export value still remained at 1.8% because Taiwan usually exports products with lower prices to India. As for the Chinese PV manufacturers, although first-tier manufacturers, like Jinko, JA Solar, and Suntech, export cells to India directly, they only account for a small percentage of the total exports. As a result, India’s anti-dumping duties are not likely to cause any serious harm to both Chinese and Taiwanese PV manufacturers.