Effect of Imposition of ADD on Solar Panel Imports in India

The Indian Solar Industry is witnessing exciting times. After the hullabaloo around GST subsided, it’s now time for Anti-dumping duties. India initiated a probe into Chinese solar panel imports after a petition by the Indian Solar Manufacturers Association (ISMA) to impose ADD (anti-dumping duty) on Chinese solar imports into India.

Indian RE developers are becoming a jittery lot with the government soon to announce a decision on imposing anti dumping duties on imports of solar panels from major Asian countries such as Malaysia, Taiwan, and China. Solar equipment imports from China, Malaysia, and Taiwan have considerably increased over the past years, so much so that over 80% of the Indian solar market is now flooded with these cheap imports. Note ADD has already been imposed on imports of solar glass by the DGAD which means that the government will also impose ADD on solar panel imports from China.

The Indian government did not impose ADD in the past because they wanted to encourage a faster adoption of solar power in the country. However, with intense competition from neighboring countries and continuously falling prices, the Indian domestic solar manufacturers are in red and bleeding. They cannot compete with Chinese imports and many of them are on the verge of closing down.

This means a major setback for the solar energy developers who do not have clauses in their contracts with the solar buyers of an escalation in prices in case ADD is imposed on imports of solar panels. This has already proved to be the bane of owners of large thermal coal plant owners such as the Tatas and Adanis who saw their plants go into huge losses after duties were imposed on exports of coal from Indonesia. Indian developers have bid very aggressively for winning large solar plants and have not taken cognizance of the risks associated.

The Indian solar developers are already crying wolf after Chinese solar panel makers have increased the quotes on solar panel prices after prices jumped by almost 10-20% in the last few months due to higher demand in other regions such as USA and China. A jump in raw material prices has also contributed to the price rise. With almost no alternative to the large Chinese solar panel makers, the Indian developers have no option to move their contract somewhere else. These developers say that the Chinese have reneged on their contracts however, they have not gone to courts nor named the suppliers. In case they find the situation very insufferable the developers can easily move their business elsewhere but they know that they won’t get such cheap subsidized panels in other places.

Here is a statement of Fortum India MD about the imposition of tariffs showing how jittery these people have become:

“I can’t build in a duty now in my tariff. So, I don’t want to be unfairly targeted because of that. Clearly, it’s unfair that a developer needs to take a call on the ADD. There has to be a mechanism, by which the developer should be exempted. I would leave that to the authority but my project should not be impacted,” said Aggarwal.

“DGAD (directorate of anti-dumping and allied duties) will decide how much reduction in tariff and its cascading effect helps the country vis-à-vis creation of this ADD. If we want to do 100 Gw, we have to add 20 Gw every year. We don’t have the manufacturing capacity to do that. Out of a capacity of 5 Gw, 1 Gw is cells, so the balance anyway comes from outside. Whether that Rs 1 tariff increase because of ADD creates ancillary, manpower and cascading effect versus how much advantage, if you were to start producing here, that is to be evaluated,” said Aggarwal.

Source: Business Standard