Anti-dumping duty landed on your imports: the importer playbook

Who imposed this duty on your imports, and under what law?

The first thing an importer must understand is the two-body split. The DGTR (Directorate General of Trade Remedies, under the Department of Commerce) investigates the case and only recommends the measure. The Ministry of Finance (Department of Revenue, Tax Research Unit) actually levies it, by customs notification. And it must do so within 3 months of DGTR's provisional or final recommendation (Trade Remedial Measures FAQ Q.14). When you argue the merits, you argue to DGTR; when you pay, reclaim, or dispute collection, you deal with CBIC and customs. Keeping the two files separate saves months of misdirected letters.

The legal anchors matter because they tell you which measure hit you. Anti-dumping duty is imposed under Sections 9A and 9B of the Customs Tariff Act 1975 read with the Anti-Dumping Rules 1995. Countervailing duty (against subsidised, not dumped, imports) sits under Section 9 of the same Act with the CVD Rules 1995. Safeguard duty, which targets injurious import surges regardless of pricing, comes under Section 8B. Check the notification's recital line to identify which regime you are in; this page focuses on anti-dumping, the most common of the three.

The single most importer-relevant design feature is the lesser-duty rule . Under Rule 4 of the Anti-Dumping Rules, Indian law caps the duty at the lower of the dumping margin and the injury margin. Where the injury margin is the Non-Injurious Price of the domestic industry minus the Landed Value of the imports. The duty is meant only to remove the injury to domestic producers, not to punish imports. This is why arguing about the Non-Injurious Price and landed-value methodology is a live importer battleground, not an academic one.

Cases carry a standard naming convention (for example AD (OI)-29/2024 for an original investigation initiated in 2024) and every public document in the case (initiation notice, non-confidential application, preliminary and final findings, disclosure statements) lives on dgtr.gov.in. Most investigations start on a domestic-industry application that meets the twin standing test: supporters must account for at least 25% of total production of the like article, and more than 50% of the production of those producers expressing an opinion, tested on volume. Suo-moto initiation is also possible under Rule 5(4) on information from the Commissioner of Customs or any other source, but it is rare.

Is your product actually covered. And could the case die on its own?

Read the initiation notice the way an importer should, not the way a lawyer bills for. The notice defines the product under consideration (PUC) by description, lists the subject countries, and sets the period of investigation (POI. Normally 12 months, and not older than 5 months at the application date) plus a 3-financial-year injury period. The duty follows the PUC description, not just the tariff line: goods under the named HS code can fall outside the description, and goods under other codes can fall inside it. That makes arguing PUC scope (grade exclusions, spec exclusions, end-use carve-outs) the highest-leverage argument an importer has. A product excluded from the PUC pays nothing, whatever the duty table says.

Before spending on representation, check the automatic kill-switches. Under FAQ Q.41, an investigation is terminated when the dumping margin is below 2% of the export price; when the subject country's share of imports of the like article is below 3% (or below 7% collectively for all such small countries); when injury is negligible; when the application is withdrawn; or when the evidence is insufficient. If your subject country is a marginal supplier to India, the de minimis route can end the case without a single merits argument.

There is also a standing attack. Domestic producers who are related to exporters or importers of the subject article, or who themselves import it, can be excluded from the "domestic industry". And if the applicants then fail the twin standing test, the case fails with them. The Soda Ash investigation (AD (OI)-29/2024) shows importers and users attacking applicant standing and related-party status as a live, argued tactic, not a textbook footnote.

Your ammunition for the volume arguments is official import data. DGCI&S transaction-wise import data is the official source, obtainable with a DGTR authorization letter under Trade Notices 1/2018 and 7/2018, and is normally supplied within a week of fee payment. If you intend to contest the subject country's import share or the injury volumes, request the authorization early. The applicant's petition data is not the last word.

Can an importer or user industry actually oppose the investigation?

Yes. Importers and users are interested parties by design, not by concession. DGTR sends questionnaires under Rule 6(4) to known importers and users of the article and circulates the non-confidential version of the application under Rule 6(3). Four questionnaire tracks exist: the Exporter Questionnaire, the Importer Questionnaire, the User-industry questionnaire (format per Trade Notice 08/2021), and the Economic Interest Questionnaire (EIQ) , issued to all interested parties and the concerned administrative ministry. The EIQ is the public-interest channel (the place where downstream cost impact, availability, and competition arguments formally enter the record) and it is the importer's main strategic instrument.

The Soda Ash final findings (AD (OI)-29/2024, final findings dated 29.09.2025) are the proof of life. DGTR questionnaired 28-plus named importers and users (household names like HUL, P&G and Asahi India Glass among the glass and detergent makers) and several filed importer questionnaire responses. Parties that skipped the questionnaire, such as Saint Gobain India and the soaps and detergents industry federation, still filed written submissions. So there are two tiers of participation: the full questionnaire track, and the written-submissions track for those who come in later or lighter.

The arguments that actually ran in Soda Ash form a ready-made importer playbook: that the duty was not aligned with public interest; a demand to disclose the "all others" margin before final findings; attacks on applicant standing and related-party status; causation counter-narratives pointing to the applicants' own plant breakdowns and low capacity utilisation as the real source of injury; and challenges to the price-undercutting methodology. None of these require you to prove the exporters innocent of dumping. They attack injury, causation, and public interest, which are the limbs importers are best placed to contest.

Mechanically, everything goes through the SETU portal (setu.dgtr.gov.in): register in the role Interested Party with the mandatory Upload Authorisation Letter, complete email-OTP registration and 2FA login, and file every submission in dual versions. Confidential (CV) and non-confidential (NCV). The NCV auto-publishes to the public file. There is no amendment allowed after submission, files are capped at 20MB each (Excel up to 70MB), and PDF and Excel are the accepted formats. Our SETU portal filing guide walks the registration and upload flow screen by screen.

Which deadlines decide whether you get heard?

The importer's clock starts at the initiation notice, not at the duty notification. By the time a duty appears in a customs notification, the investigation record is closed. The arguments you never filed do not exist. Registration as an interested party must happen within 40 days of initiation (Trade Notice 11/2018; filing a questionnaire response is deemed registration even without a written request. FAQ Q.9-Q.10). The questionnaire response itself is due 30 days from receipt of the Rule 6(4) notice. In practice about 40 days from publication of the initiation notice. Extendable case by case, but parties who miss the stipulated time get no additional time .

From there the milestones stack quickly: a sampling decision within 80 days of initiation where 3 or more exporters cooperate; preliminary findings targeted at day 90; the earliest provisional duty only after 60 days from initiation; the Rule 6(6) oral hearing targeted at day 120; and the Rule 16 disclosure statement targeted at day 160. Final findings must issue within 1 year of initiation, extendable by up to 6 further months, and the Ministry of Finance must notify the duty within 3 months of the recommendation. GIT (general information and technical) queries raised on SETU carry their own "Last Date of Reply" counters. Each one is a mini-deadline that lapses silently.

How is the duty you pay at the port actually calculated?

The duty table you will live under has a simple mechanic: cooperating producer/exporter combinations get individual duty rows ; everyone else falls under the residual "any producer other than…" row at a facts-available rate. Under Rule 6(8), DGTR treats parties who refuse access to necessary information as non-cooperative and decides on the facts available. Which in practice means the applicant's version of the numbers. The lesser-duty rule still applies to every row: duty = min(dumping margin, injury margin).

The Soda Ash duty table makes the spread concrete. For Turkey, cooperating producer ETI Soda drew USD 69/MT and Kazan USD 17/MT. While the residual row for Turkey landed at USD 113/MT. For Russia, Bashkir drew USD 40/MT and Berezniki USD 89/MT. The importer consequence is blunt: which producer you buy from now determines your landed cost . Sourcing from a cooperating exporter with an individual row can be several times cheaper than the residual row. So pushing your suppliers to file the exporter questionnaire is the single highest-ROI move you can make in the first 40 days. (If your suppliers face the mirror problem abroad, our guide on defending a foreign anti-dumping case as an Indian exporter covers that side.)

Provisional duty has its own mechanics: it is imposable only after 60 days from initiation and lives at most 6 months, extendable to 9 for anti-dumping. If the final duty comes in lower than the provisional duty you paid, the difference is refunded; if it comes in higher, the difference is not collected (FAQ Q.45). Retrospective exposure is tightly capped too: anti-dumping duty can reach back at most 90 days before the duty notification, and only on findings of a history of dumping or importer awareness plus massive dumping undermining the remedy (FAQ Q.24). Meaning goods on the water are usually safe beyond that window.

When can you get anti-dumping duty back?

In order of how often they actually happen:

The refund routes

• Provisional-vs-final differential. If the final duty is lower than the provisional duty collected, or the duty is withdrawn entirely, the difference is refundable on application to the designated Competent Authority of CBIC (FAQ Q.15, Q.45). Note the institutional split again: DGTR decided the case, but the refund is a CBIC/customs process.
• Negative final findings or termination. Where the case ends in de minimis termination, withdrawal, or a no-injury finding, provisional deposits come back the same way.
• Review outcomes. A mid-term review that reduces or revokes the duty stops your future liability from the revised notification onward. Frame this prospectively: it changes what you pay next, not what you already paid.
• Provisional safeguard duty. Refundable by design if the safeguard investigation ends without a definitive measure (FAQ Q.23, Q.56(E)).

The refund application to CBIC lives or dies on reconciliation. It needs the bills of entry showing the anti-dumping duty actually paid, the provisional and final duty notification references, and the final findings. Which is why the discipline starts at the port, not at the refund desk: tag every bill of entry with the provisional-duty notification number from day one, so that when the final duty lands lower, the differential claim reconciles line by line instead of becoming an archaeology project.

Which review or appeal can cut or kill the duty later?

The duty is not forever, and importers and users have standing in every review. The baseline: a definitive anti-dumping duty lasts at most 5 years from imposition unless extended by a sunset review. And there is no legal cap on the number of extensions (FAQ Q.37-Q.38). Assume the domestic industry will file for extension, and plan to contest it rather than hope it lapses.

The routes: (a) Mid-term review. Application window 12 to 42 months from imposition of the definitive duty (Trade Notice 1/2010; SOP para 2.5). This is the importer/user route to argue changed circumstances: dumping has stopped, injury is gone, or the PUC scope is wrong. (b) Sunset review (the domestic industry must apply at least 270 days before expiry (240 with a late fee and justification; under 240 days the application is not entertained) TN 02/2017). Importers should diarise the expiry date and prepare opposition evidence for the SSR, because non-participation lets the extension go through on the applicant's record alone. (c) New Shipper Review. For suppliers of yours who did not export during the original POI and are unrelated to duty-bearing exporters: the route to get a new source its own individual rate. (d) CESTAT appeal under Section 9C of the Customs Tariff Act, within 90 days from imposition of the duty by the Central Government, with further challenge to the High Court and Supreme Court, and writ petitions in limited cases such as natural-justice violations. Negative findings are appealable too (Jindal Polyfilms, Delhi HC, 20.09.2018). Which cuts both ways: a termination you won can be dragged back.

Close with the calendar mindset: an importer facing a 5-year duty has three fixed dates to diarise on day one. CESTAT day-90, MTR month-12, and SSR expiry-minus-270-days. Everything else in the case moves; those three do not.

What should your team do in the first 40 days. And after?

Phase 1. Within 40 days of the initiation notice

• Pull the initiation notice and non-confidential application from dgtr.gov.in
• Confirm PUC coverage against your actual imports. The description, not just the HS code
• Quantify exposure: annual import value × plausible duty range, using individual-vs-residual spreads like Soda Ash's USD 17 vs USD 113/MT
• Register on SETU as Interested Party with the Upload Authorisation Letter
• Decide participation tier: full importer questionnaire + EIQ, or written submissions only
• Notify your foreign suppliers immediately that their cooperation determines your future duty row, and ask whether they are filing the exporter questionnaire
• Request DGCI&S import data authorization if you will contest import-volume or de minimis numbers

Phase 2. During the investigation

• File the importer questionnaire and EIQ in CV + NCV form. Remember: no amendments after submission, 20MB per-file cap
• Attend the oral hearing (target ~day 120)
• Track GIT queries on SETU and their "Last Date of Reply" counters
• Comment on the disclosure statement within its short window. 5 days in Soda Ash

Phase 3. After duty imposition

• Tag every bill of entry with the duty notification number
• Diarise CESTAT day-90, MTR month-12-to-42, and SSR expiry-minus-270
• File the CBIC refund application if the final duty is lower than the provisional duty paid
• Re-run sourcing maths across the duty rows. A cooperating supplier's individual rate may now beat your incumbent
• Never re-route or re-describe to dodge the duty. Anti-circumvention duty is co-terminus with the parent measure

You run a float-glass plant importing soda ash from Turkey at roughly USD 250/MT CIF, 12,000 MT a year. DGTR initiates AD (OI)-29/2024 (Soda Ash from Turkey, Russia, USA and Iran) on a domestic-industry application. Your two suppliers are ETI Soda and a smaller Turkish producer that has never dealt with trade-remedy filings. </> } result= >

Sources & citations

• [DGTR. Trade Remedial Measures FAQ (PDF)](https://www.dgtr.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-06/Trade%20Remedial%20Measures%20FAQ.pdf).
• [DGTR. Manual of Standard Operating Procedures (PDF)](https://www.dgtr.gov.in/sites/default/files/2024-06/MANUAL%20OF%20SOP.pdf).
• [Soda Ash final findings, AD (OI)-29/2024, 29.09.2025 (NCV PDF)](https://dgtr.gov.in/sites/default/files/2025-09/FF_NCV_Soda%20Ash_29.09.25.pdf).
• [DGTR. Anti-dumping questionnaire formats (Trade Notice 08/2021)](https://www.dgtr.gov.in/en/anti-dumping-guidelines/streamlining-anti-dumping-investigations-process-anti-dumping-questionnaire).
• [SETU portal. Setu.dgtr.gov.in](https://setu.dgtr.gov.in/).
• [DGTR. Dgtr.gov.in](https://www.dgtr.gov.in/en).

Update history

• 2026-08-18 First published.