The European Commission has accepted a complaint filed by the European Bicycle Manufacturers Association (EBMA) in August into alleged circumvention of anti-dumping duties on Chinese bicycles. The allegations are that some Chinese manufacturers are illegally transshipping and repackaging their products in Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia, to avoid the anti-dumping duties of 48.5 percent on Chinese bicycles imported into the EU.
The European Commission announced on Sept. 25 that it had accepted the complaint, as it had sufficient evidence of transshipments in the four above countries, as well as assembly of certain parts of Chinese bicycles in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia. It points to a shift in imports from these countries since the anti-dumping duties were increased in 2005, without any apparent cause other than the imposition of the duty. And it adds that the impact of the anti-dumping duties is being undermined by the alleged transshipment and the dumped prices of the products under investigation.
The EBMA has long argued that imports of Chinese bicycles into Europe were vastly underestimated. The organization said that the EU's import figures placed the volume of imported Chinese bicycles at about 400,000 units, but that the real figures were closer to 1.5 million – due to circumvention.
The European Commission's investigation is to be concluded in nine months. The Commission's team is already conducting an interim review on the anti-dumping duties, which were extended in 2011 until 2016. And in May the Commission also took up a complaint by the EBMA arguing that Chinese bicycle makers benefitted from government subsidies.
The Commission has 13 months to complete that investigation, for which teams of investigators are currently visiting European manufacturers.
Bike Europe subsequently published an update on bicycle imports into the EU, showing shifts among their countries of provenance. Indonesian imports jumped by 11.2 percent to 612,000 units in 2011. They declined by more than 4.7 percent in the first half of this year but their average value per unit increased by 15.3 percent. EU imports from Tunisia expanded by 25.8 percent last year, but they dropped again by 7.7 percent in the first half of this year. On the other hand, imports from Sri Lanka dropped by 20.3 percent to 957,000 units last year, and there weren't any statistics on imports from Malaysia.
Another striking aspect of the figures was a sharp increase in imports from Cambodia, which reached 366,000 units in 2011 but shot up to nearly 520,000 for the first half of 2012 alone. Bike Europe reported that the increase was triggered by the move of one manufacturer's production from Thailand to Cambodia, in order to benefit from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), offering reduced EU import duties. In the case of Cambodia, imports of bicycles, parts and accessories into the EU are entirely duty-free, compared with a standard rate of 14 percent for bike imports from non-EU countries.
Sharp increases were also reported for the first half of this year in EU imports of bicycles from the Philippines and Bangladesh. On the other hand, Chinese imports dropped by 36 percent, but this was due to the fact that e-bike exports were no longer included in the statistics. The numbers are now reported separately, showing EU imports of no fewer than 198,000 e-bikes from China in the first half of the year.
Enforced since 1993, the anti-dumping duties have undoubtedly protected the European market from Chinese imports, which make up less than 4 percent of the units sold in the EU, a much smaller rate than in the U.S. and Japanese markets.
