BRITISH RETAIL CONSORTIUM CALLS FOR PLASTIC BAG IMPORT DUTIES TO BE DROPPED BY EUROPEAN COMMISSION

24 February 2006

The EC (anti-dumping) issue – which now includes plastic bags of all kinds being imported from China - comment from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and Association of Charity Stores:

Alisdair Gray, Director of the British Retail Consortium’s Brussels office says:

“We are already facing a 20% punitive tax on leather shoes from China.  A 20% tax on plastic bags could cost British retailers up to £60m. The investigation is unjustified as Europe simply isn’t producing sufficient quantities of bags to service consumer demand and should be dropped immediately.”

A levy on bin liners would not be good news for the charity retail sector. Lekha Klouda, Executive Secretary of the Association of Charity Stores says:

“Charity shops remove over 110,000 tonnes of textiles from households every year and use thousands of plastic bags and bin liners in the process. A tax would have a serious effect on the income raised for charity work. The outcome of the tax would be to put many charity retail operations at risk”.

BRC has written to Chinese Trade Negotiator, Gao Hucheng expressing the sector’s concerns over this renewed attack on competitive Chinese producers.