Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City, Jan. 28 (VNA) -- The Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) on Tuesday strongly rejected the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC)'s preliminary decision on the anti-dumping duty investigation of certain frozen "basa" and "tra" fish fillets from Viet Nam.

VASEP said that its members have never dumped fish fillets in the U.S. market nor sold them at prices that did any harm to the U.S. fishing industry. The unfair DOC decision will threaten the lives of tens of thousands of farmers and poor people living in Viet Nam's Mekong delta.

VASEP asserted its determination to continue protecting Vietnamese "basa" and "tra" producers' legitimate rights against the Catfish Farmers of America (CFA)'s unjustified accusation and the DOC's groundless conclusion.

VASEP said that the DOC is not objective while not taking into consideration all factors of a closed production process (from fish breeding and raising to processing of export products, which is being carried out by Vietnamese enterprises and has been reported to the DOC whose calculation focussed only on the price of the period of processing frozen fillets.

In addition, the DOC is unfair in calculating Vietnamese exporters' fillet processing prices by deliberately not using VASEP's data on the price of the Bangladeshi Pangasius species' material fish, but using other data with material fish prices twice higher. This is illogical and does not truly reflect reality.

VASEP regrets that the DOC has neither spent enough time nor shown full responsibility in examining documents that were timely provided by Vietnamese enterprises.

Worse still, the DOC has made many unacceptable technical mistakes in calculating a specific dumping margin for each business. This will affect the seriousness of its decisions while exercising its legal responsibility, and have an adverse impact on the US Government's prestige toward Vietnamese businesses.

VASEP and its member businesses are worried that the DOC's wrong decision would adversely affect the two countries' relations. This was, in fact, a disguised protection measure that runs counter to the spirit of free trade and fair competition often mentioned by the U.S.
"We request the DOC to seriously re-consider its decision and to correct its mistakes in choosing methods and statistics for its calculation," said the VASEP.

VASEP will continue with its struggle against the imposition of anti-dumping tax in the next stages of the lawsuit before the DOC and the United States International Trade Commission (USITC).

However, VASEP and its members are willing to continue to cooperate with the US Government agencies and circles to seek an objective solution to protect both sides' legitimate interests and do no harm to the bilateral relations that the Governments and peoples of the two countries wish to further improve and develop after the Bilateral Trade Agreement was signed. VASEP requests both the DOC and CFA to conduct the next steps of the lawsuit in this spirit.

VASEP acknowledges the DOC's commitment to doing its best to inquire into Vietnamese businesses' closed production process to make its overall calculation.

VASEP and its member businesses will actively cooperate with the DOC to settle all its remaining queries. As far as the DOC knows, if the breeding-to-processing method of culculation is applied, VASEP's member businesses will enjoy zero anti-dumping tax rate.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Viet Nam News Agency on Tuesday, Deputy Trade Minister Luong Van Tu criticised the DOC's initial ruling as not objective and unfair. He said the ruling simply aims to protect the U.S. catfish industry.

He said the DOC has failed to take into account Viet Nam seafood farming and processing industry's favourable conditions, including ideal weather, low labour costs, and diversity of fish products. All this has made Viet Nam's catfish highly competitive, stressed the senior trade official.

He also said the DOC's decision has completely run counter to the spirit of the one-year-old Viet Nam-U.S. Bilateral Trade Agreement, and has not complied with U.S. President G.W. Bush's call for a world where tariffs will be limited to zero-5 percent by 2015 when he attended the recent Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit.

"Viet Nam once again confirms that it has never sold frozen "Tra" and "Basa" fish fillets at dumping prices in the U.S. market. The Trade Ministry has asked the DOC to reconsider its initial ruling and base itself on thorough analysis and accurate information to make the final decision objective and fair in a constructive spirit in the interest of the Viet Nam-U.S. trade relations," concluded Deputy Minister Tu.