Jan. 11 – Indian engineering company Larsen & Toubro chairman and managing director A. M. Naik has said China is killing the Indian manufacturing sector and is calling for an anti-dumping duty on Chinese goods reports The Press Trust of India.

Naik says that Indian power companies have made orders for 50,000 mw of plant equipment from China. “We can say that Chinese power sector is virtually working for India. It is not good that 80 percent of our dependence for power plant equipment is on one country, and that too China,” he said.

“China keeps its currency fixed; it is not a market economy like ours. We have taxes on goods manufactured locally, but none on imported products. This is an unfair situation for Indian goods. This is why there should be a 25 percent anti-dumping duty on Chinese products,” Naik said in Surat during the foundation’s stone-laying ceremony of a forgings unit at Hazira reports The Press Trust of India. “The day China opens its economy, its prices are bound to go up by 25 percent. We cannot allow a superpower-in-the-making (China) to grow at the cost of our companies, but unfortunately the government is not taking any steps to stop this.”

L&T is building a new manufacturing and ultra heavy forgings unit at Hazira in partnership with Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd. It will produce finished forgings for nuclear reactors, pressurizers and steam generators, heavy forgings for critical equipment in the hydrocarbon sector, thermal power plants and steel plants.

India has already imposed anti-dumping duties on Chinese imports in the past year including toys, textiles, chemicals, mobile phones and telecommunication equipment. During the first half of 2009, anti-dumping measures implemented by both countries led to a decline in bilateral trade by 32 percent to US$19 billion reports The Hindu.