WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONTN/RL/W/101
6 May 2003
(03-2408)
Negotiating Group on Rules Original:  English
EGYPTIAN PAPER CONTAINING REPLIES TO QUESTIONS POSED
BY AUSTRALIA IN DOCUMENT NUMBER TN/RL/W/73
The following communication, dated 5 May 2003, has been received from the Permanent
Mission of Egypt.
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Egypt thanks Australia for its comments and questions on Egypt’s position paper on the
Negotiations on the AD Agreement (document TN/RL/W/55 dated 10 February 2003), and takes this
opportunity to reply to the questions set forth in Australia’s paper (document TN/RL/W/73 dated
18 March 2003) which was tabled at the March session of the Rules Group.
• Egypt appreciates Australia’s agreement with Egypt in its contention that the recent increase in
the number of anti-dumping actions taken by new members is not a sign of over-use or misuse in
the WTO AD Agreement and that all members, including developing countries, have the right to
take legitimate trade remedies against injurious dumped imports into their market.
• Egypt agrees with Australia that excessively complex rules are resource intensive for all WTO
members, and notes, as Australia does, the Doha mandate of clarifying and improving the anti-
dumping rules, rather than making unnecessary changes to the actual substance and character of
the AD Agreement through the introduction of ex cessively complex and stringent rules.  The
introduction of such rules will not permit all members, notably developing country members, toenforce their rights and obligations under the AD Agreement.
• While Egypt agrees with Australia that the work of the Working Group on Implementation is
extremely useful, it does not agree that codification of guide lines could be useful to all Membersand could, ultimately, facilitate the work of inves tigating authorities.  Indeed, the complexity and
factual nature of both anti-dumping and countervailing investigations requires investigatingauthorities to have a certain liberty in the en forcement of the rules which were agreed upon.
Moreover, the AD and SCM Agreements are general agreements which set the basic rights and
obligations of Members while preserving the flexibility of investigating authorities in the practice
and conduct of their investigations.  Egypt considers that the codification of guidelines would
limit the autonomy of investigating authorities.
Question
• Australia asked that it would be interested in where and how Egypt considers the issue of resource
constraints could be reduced in the current WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement?TN/RL/W/101
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Reply
• In order to answer this question, Egypt would like firstly to state that it does not consider that the
WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement directly imposes constraints on investigating authorities.  It isthe use of the anti-dumping instrument by investigating authorities, which requires Members to
make use of their resources.
• Egypt agrees with Australia that the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement allows a certain margin of
flexibility for investigating authorities in init iating and conducting anti-dumping investigations.
This flexibility is one of the important features of the Agreement which is not intended to overly
restrict investigating authorities in their operations but which sets the general principles which
must be complied with in anti-dumping proceedings.
• In view of the above, Egypt considers that the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement does not impose
unduly burdensome or unnecessary constraints on investigating authorities.  The constraints
currently imposed on investigating authorities directly result from the use of the anti-dumping
instrument.  Also, Egypt believes that the balance between the rights and obligations of interested
parties struck under the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement is appropriate.  Furthermore, Egypt is of
the opinion that the flexibility which is inherent to the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement is
necessary in order to ensure that investigating au thorities which operate in different legal systems
and which may have very distinct resources at their disposal are able to use the anti-dumping
instrument.
Question
• Could Egypt provide examples of proposals or  recommendations within the mandate of the
negotiations that would set an unreasonable or unnecessary burden on an investigating authority?
Reply
• To answer the first part of the Australian questi on, Egypt would first like to recall the mandate of
the Negotiating Group as set forth in the Doha Ministerial Declaration:
“ (…) we agree to negotiations aimed at clarifying and improving disciplines under
the Agreements on Implemen tation of Article VI of the GATT 1994 and on Subsidies
and Countervailing Measures, while preserving the basic concepts, principles and
effectiveness of these Agreements and their instruments and objectives (…)”
(emphasis added)
• As clearly stated by Egypt in its position paper on the Doha Declaration concerning the
negotiations on the Anti-Dumping Agreement (Document No TN/RL/W/55), the mandate of the
Negotiating Group is to clarify and improve existing provisions of the Agreement.  Proposals
aimed at modifying the structure of the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement or the rights and
obligations of Members are outside of the scope of the current negotiations even though they maybe considered by their proponents as necessary or beneficial.
• Egypt considers that all the proposals or recommendations, which fall within the scope of the
negotiations, do not impose any unreasonable or unduly burdensome obligations on investigatingauthority.TN/RL/W/101
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Proposals or recommendations imposing additional unnecessary burdens on investigating
authorities modify the structure and balance of the Agreement and, thus, fall outside the scope of
the negotiations.
Egypt believes that any proposal or recommendations, directly or indirectly imposing substantial
obligations on Members, cannot be considered as a mere clarification or improvement of the
existing disciplines under the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement.
• In order to provide answer to the second part of this question, Egypt would like to stress that its
general submission (TN/RL/W/55) should be read in conjunction with the more detailed
submissions (TN/RL/W/56, TN/RL/W/57, TN/RL/W/79) in which Egypt has already clarified its
position on the different proposals submitted by others members.  Having said that, Egypt would
provide four examples including lesser duty provisions as follows.
1. Lesser duty provisions
In Egypt’s view, the introduction of the manda tory lesser duty rule  in the AD agreement
would exceed the mandate of the Doha Ministerial Declaration.  Indeed, mandating the lesser dutyrule would increase the obligations imposed on Members and not clarify or improve existing
provisions of the AD Agreement.
In addition, the introduction of a mandatory lesser duty rule would be more resource intensive
for investigating authorities, especially for developing countries which are currently facing problemsrelating to resource constraints, since the application of such rule requires conducting a very
sophisticated and exact analysis of the injury margin for each foreign exporter.
Furthermore, it may prove to be a huge burden on an investigating authority to source the
necessary data i.e. competing prices at the righ t level of trade in the domestic market during the
investigation period, where all data has to be related to the like product, and to make the necessary
adjustments in the case where the products are not homogenous, and to define comparable segments,
models, categories etc, in addition to making further possible adjustments for differences in physical
characteristics.  Such adjustments differ from case to case, and require very experienced investigating
officers and data-gathering techniques.  As such Egypt contends that the application of the lesser dutyrule should be left to the discretion of each member.
2. Initiation Standards
Egypt believes that such amendments are not necessary.  Firstly, the current provisions of the
AD Agreement clearly require that investigating authorities initiate an investigation only where
substantiated evidence of dumping, material injury and causal link has been provided to them.  Inaddition, Egypt considers that Canada’s proposal that investigating authorities should examine before
initiation, information on factors other than dumping that may be contributing to the injury being
alleged will result in increasing the obligations for investigating authorities at an early stage of an
investigation.  In that it will lead to an absurd situation in which the investigating authority will find
itself conducting a resource-intensive factual investigat ion.  This issue is being investigated in details
after investigation.
3. Swift dispute settlement
Egypt does not believe that authorizing swift dispute settlement procedures in the event that a
Member considers that an investigation has been initiated in violation of the initiation requirements
set forth in the AD Agreement will ensure a bett er compliance with these requirements.  Indeed,
authorizing Members to initiate dispute settlement proceedings at an earlier stage will not guaranteeTN/RL/W/101
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stricter compliance with the initiation requirements.  Egypt believes that such a procedure would
generally be used as a procedural impediment in order to obstruct duly initiated investigations.
Finally, the proposed mechanism will require new users of Anti-dumping mechanism, especially
developing countries,  to hire foreign legal expertise to prepare and defend their cases before DSB,
which will consequently constitute very heavy burden on their limited financial resources, in additionto the extra time which will be consumed in that context.
4. Public interest
Egypt considers that the current provisions of the Anti-Dumping Agreement regarding public
interest are clear enough and gives the investigating authority the option to determine whether the
public interest will benefit from the anti-dumping duties, or not.  Egypt considers that the conduct ofpublic interest test should remain a matter of domestic policy left to the discretion of each member
because it is clear that conducting such a test would require a more complex and detailed analysis of
many aspects and sectors of the economy, and will consume an unreasonable amount of time and
resources, as elaborated earlier.
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