Japan has complained at the World Trade Organization about India’s duties on mobile phones, base stations and routers, and the circuit boards and other components that go into them, a WTO filing showed on Tuesday. Some of the tariffs on goods of substantial interest to Japan were now “clearly in excess” of the rates allowed by the WTO, Japan said. India’s WTO membership terms specified that the import tariff on all the disputed goods was zero percent, but India applied a 20% tariff to mobile phones and base stations, and tariffs of 10%, 15% and 20% on the other products, Japan said. India’s imports of switchers and routers, totalling $5.7 billion in 2018, were dominated by China and Vietnam, while imports from Japan were worth $52 million, less than 1 percent of the Indian import market. Under WTO rules, India has 60 days to settle the dispute, but after that Japan could ask the WTO to set up an adjudication panel to say whether India’s tariffs break the rules.

Source: Hindustan Times May 14, 2019 15:11 UTC