The Ministry of Economy, Industry and Commerce (MEIC) decided not to impose a measure of safeguard against imports of construction rods, so the transnational company Arcelor Mittal reported that it has no incentive to maintain its production in the country.
In a press release distributed on Tuesday, the company said it “does not play with the same rules importers have right now.”
The company notes that the international trade in rods from China and Turkey have received sanctions, since they allegedly receive subsidies that turn it into an unfair trade.
Countries like the United States, Mexico, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and many others have already applied anti-dumping and safeguard measures, so as not to see their national industries disappear. Due to these imports, Costa Rica stopped receiving more than $ 11 million in the last three years,”
said the company.
The safeguard measure requested by the industry amounted to the restitution of the import rate that existed in Costa Rica until 2011, equivalent to the rate currently held by other construction products.
We believe the resolution has a serious contradiction, since in the opening of the investigation process the MEIC confirmed the existence of a growth in imports of steel rods and the existence of a threat of injury for the national industry; and now, at the end of the process, the existence of these requirements that were tested and accepted since the beginning of the investigation is denied,”
said Rodrigo Archer, manager of the company.
Despite this, the MEIC indicated that its investigation was able to verify that there are no elements that justify the imposition of the average rate, in accordance with what is established in articles 2.1. and 4 of the Agreement on the Safeguarding of the World Trade Organization (WTO).
According to the transnational, importing steel allows the “legal evasion” of import taxes for up to $ 3.6 million a year. They also indicated that the benefits of the rate elimination have not been transferred to consumers.
The company added that it will exhaust all administrative and judicial instances. The next step is to request an appeal within the next two business days.