In its appeal, India said it has sought a review by the Appellate Body “of the errors of law and legal interpretation by the Panel in its Report and requests findings by the Appellate Body”.
“The products which, as Japan alleges, should be given tariff-free treatment were never covered under the ITA and hence were not negotiated,” India said in its appeal.
It also argued that the concessions under the ITA were available to all WTO members, and not only to the ITA participants.
“Accordingly, ITA does not follow the multilateral principles of reciprocity and mutually advantageous arrangements, and India has not received any reciprocal benefits in exchange for the alleged concessions,” New Delhi said.
In 2019, Japan, the EU and Taiwan challenged import duty of 7. 5% — later increased to 15% — levied by India in 2017. India later further raised the duty to 20%.
“In particular, the Panel erred because the order of analysis conducted… is not correct,” India said in the appeal and requested the Appellate Body to reverse or set aside the panel’s conclusions. While the April 17 order of the dispute settlement body was for three similar disputes raised by the three members who had claimed that India was applying duties on imports of certain ICT products in excess of the zero-bound duty rate set out in India’s WTO Schedule, India’s appeal is against the order on the dispute with Japan only.New Delhi has maintained that most of the items identified were not covered under the Information Technology Agreement as these did not exist in 1996 and the tariff lines were not included in the pact.
“Given the ongoing lack of agreement among WTO members regarding the filling of Appellate Body vacancies, there is no Appellate Body Division available at the current time to deal with the appeals,” said a Geneva-based official and India’s appeal is considered an ‘appeal into the void’.
