Peru
To Seek Permanent Safeguards From Chinese
Products (WSJ)
Wall
Street Journal, ROBERT KOZAK June
30, 2004
LIMA --
Peru
plans to apply permanent safeguards to replace
temporary tariffs applied last year on products
imported from
China,
government officials said Wednesday. The
Peruvian government is walking a tight line in
trying to protect local industry while at the
same time working to avoid retaliation from the
Chinese government. Peruvian officials said they
will place generalized safeguards in line with
World Trade Organization, or WTO, regulations
that allow member states to take "safeguard"
actions to protect specific domestic industries
from imports. "We are going ahead with the
safeguards," Production Minister Alfonso
Velasquez said at a press conference. In
December of last year,
Peru
applied temporary tariffs on a number of Chinese
clothing products to protect the local textile
industry from growing imports. Those temporary
tariffs were set to expire on July 11. But
instead of bringing in new regulations aimed
specially at Chinese products,
Peru
will seek to avoid any charges of
discrimination. "We are seeking an alternative
possibility, which would be the placement of
generalized safeguards within the framework of
WTO, which wouldn't be discriminatory against
China,"
Trade and Tourism Minister Alfredo Ferrero said
at the same press conference. He said the
details of the government proposal will be
worked out in the coming days. Government
cabinet ministers said that
Peru
will aim to negotiate to ensure that
China
doesn't retaliate against the new safeguards.
Peru
wants to ensure that its exports of fruits, fish
and other products to
China
remain unchanged. It also wants to ensure that
Peru
remains a destination for Chinese
tourists.
Industry
Groups Concerned
Peru's
National Industrial Society had placed newspaper
advertisements this week urging the government
to place the permanent safeguards. That business
group said that temporary measures hadn't worked
to protect jobs and to keep local production and
sales at high levels. In a session before a
committee of Congress on Monday, some exporters
expressed concerns that Chinese-Peruvian trade
relations could cool if the safeguards were made
permanent, and that Peru's exports to the region
could drop. For example,
China
has been a large scale buyer of Peruvian
fishmeal. "If the safeguards are applied in a
permanent manner and
China
takes reprisals, this could produce a disaster
for fishing companies," National Fishing Society
executive Raul Sanchez Sotomayor told Congress.
Business leaders have also expressed concerns
that the move could damage
tourism.
