Turkey increases import duties on commodity plastics

06 January 2009 10:57  [Source: ICIS news]

LONDON (ICIS news)--The Turkish government has increased its customs duties on homopolymer polypropylene (PP), low density polyethylene (LDPE), polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polystyrene (PS), industry sources confirmed on Tuesday.

Effective 1 January 2009, the new tariffs would not affect imports from the EU which remained duty free, sources said.

The customs duty of all developing countries has been adjusted up to 6.5% from 3%.

This category includes countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Ukraine and Vietnam, according to market sources.

Iran and Saudi Arabia were thought to be most affected by the change in duties, due to the large amounts of new capacity due to come on stream.

The customs duty of the countries listed under the special stimulus agreement category was also raised to 6.5% from 0%, said a market source. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Colombia and Venezuela were reported to be some of the countries included in this category.

States with special trade agreements like Israel and Egypt would continue to be free of customs duty, the sources noted.

Customs duties for PS were said to have been revised back up to 3% for developing nations and 6.5% for developed nations as the regulation which had reduced the duty of developing countries to 0% and developed countries to 4% expired in December 24, 2008.

No official comment was given regarding the reason for these changes, but it was widely believed that the recent upward adjustments were due to the harsh economical situation.

“The economy is not growing as we expected. Unemployment is a real issue in Turkey at the moment,” said a major plastics player.

“We don’t really expect any immediate effect from these measures but in time we could see something,” he added.

Plastics markets worldwide were subject to weak demand and massive price decreases in the last quarter of 2008.

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By: Linda Naylor
+44 20 8652 3214

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