Last April, a Kolkata-based sanitary castings exporter?s consignment got stuck at the Los Angeles and New York ports. A radioactive check by the US customs department allegedly detected an isotopic radiation effect in a few containers. While the consignment was released in a fortnight after persistent interventions by Engineering Export Promotion Council of India (EEPC) officials, the incident led to US authorities treating subsequent consignments with suspicion reserved for terror-related activities, in many cases without even off-loading the cargo for checking.

All exports of steel and castings from India suffered on this account till the end of 2007 ? over a 1,000 containers were affected with estimated losses running into $6 million . The EEPC termed the treatment of these export consignments as a non-tariff barrier imposed by the US to protect its domestic industry. While this particular challenge was sorted out after the Indian government assured the US that the consignments being shipped directly to their shores would be pre-checked for radioactive materials, the incident is just another example of the nature of challenges facing Indian exporters across a range of goods and services.

It?s no longer high import duties that eat into exporters? ability to compete in the world markets. In developed countries, import tariffs have come down substantially?average tariffs on industrial goods are in the 5-7% range.

With developing countries such as India and China emerging as fierce price competitors in the global trade turnstiles, developed countries that pushed through the trade liberalisation agenda in the nineties are now increasingly turning protectionist, as pointed out by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in his address to industry chamber Assocham on Monday. These protections, with regard to trade or investments from developing countries, come in exotic garbs like the one used by the US to deter Indian sanitary casting exports and economists call them non-tariff barriers.

Now, New Delhi will be able to aggressively take on and possibly win trade battles on non-tariff barriers with countries like the US and the European Union, whose controversial health-related trade restrictions impacts Indian agri-exports. The government has undertaken a massive exercise of compiling all the non-tariff measures (NTMs) and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) faced by India ?s exports in its trading partner countries.

?This is an ongoing and dynamic exercise that we have started. We have compiled country-wise and product-wise NTMs and NTBs and put them in the public domain. We intend to take this up bilaterally and multilaterally with trading partners to break down these barriers that our exporters are facing,? commerce secretary G K Pillai told FE .

India has already raised strong questions about China ?s non-tariff barriers at a recent World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting to review China?s trade policy. Significantly, India is planning to raise similar tough questions on the trade barriers employed by the United States during a WTO trade policy review scheduled next week, June 9 to 11.

In the initial report put out by the commerce ministry, the US and EU are two of the leading countries that have erected the maximum number of NTM/NTBs and preventing market access to exports from India. The US has been limiting Indian marine exports by increasing inspections using its Bio-Terrorism Act, Customs Bond requirement, Mandatory labeling discriminating ?farm-raised? and ?wild? items with punitive fines and non-recognition of EIC food safety certification.

The EU has been slowing down Indian chemical exports using the Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals (REACH) legislation that increases cost of compliance by ?85,000 to ?325,000 per chemical. In the case of China, it is India?s agricultural products that are affected by that country?s opacity of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, which in turn delays clearances.

Speaking at a function, organised by Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) on Friday, Commerce minister Kamal Nath salmeed developed countries for these trade barriers and said, ? India will not hesitate to take strong retaliatory action against such countries trying to block our exports. For far too long, India has been a victim of NTBs in other countries. It is necessary for India to be more aggressive,? the minister added.

At the same function, Pillai pointed out that Indian Basmati rice was struggling to get market access in Mexico for the past 10 years. Mexico has been preventing it using their pest control tests, he said, adding that India has the right to get market access in such cases. Some successful cases include India getting to resume mango export to the US after 17 long years. Japan had also recently lifted a two-decade old ban on Indian mangoes.

?Major trading countries like the US, Japan and China undertook a similar exercise long ago and we have been at the receiving end of their criticism so far. With more capacity building in this exercise, India can also hit back and get a level playing field,? says Nagesh Kumar, director-general, Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS).

The commerce ministry plans to add/delete NTMs/NTBs in the ?dynamic? database by getting more inputs from Indian missions abroad, export promotion councils, commodity boards, development authorities like Apeda and Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) and industry bodies like CII and FICCI.

NTMs include complicated health regulations, labour standards, unfair customs procedures, trade defence measures like anti-dumping duties and also licencing systems. Countries may be able to defend some of these steps under certain exceptions in multilateral agreements. But completely illegal NTMs are referred to as NTBs.

?This is a very important exercise as we are getting integrated with the world economy with ambitions to be a leading trading nation. Our goods and services have been facing lot of barriers in several countries. It is now that we are feeling the pinch in the context of the changing mindset of the developed world, which is indulging in protectionism,? Kumar added.

By putting the NTBs in public domain, India can put a moral and peer pressure on its major export destinations like the US and the EU as it would be embarrassing for them to carry on with NTBs, Kumar said.

India ?s policies also faced close scrutiny from its trading partners. For instance, when the Parliament, initially could not pass the amendments to the patent laws, India was put on the watch list by the US and the case even went to the dispute settlement body of WTO.