By Kim Yoo-chul
Staff Reporter
Hynix Semiconductor, the world’s No. 2 dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip manufacturer, Thursday said it hopes the U.S. government will waive countervailing duties slapped on the company in the second half of next year.
The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) levied countervailing tariffs of 45 percent on Hynix chips in August 2003 when Micron Technology and Infineon Technologies claimed that the South Korean company had been subsidized by the government in 2002 to escape bankruptcy.
Hynix said ITC and the U.S. Department of Commerce have started a ``sunset review’’ over Hynix’s countervailing tariffs, with a final ruling forecast to come in the second half of next year.
``We are quite confident the removal of such tariffs will occur in the second half of 2009,’’ its spokeswoman Park Seong-ae said.
According to data from Gartner, a market research firm, the U.S. market was found to take up the biggest sales portion of Hynix in terms of export amount in 2007. Hynix exported $1.67 billion worth of chips to the U.S. over that period, while sales in the EU and Japan reached $850 million and $700 million, respectively.
In March, Hynix said the countervailing duties imposed in 2005 by the U.S. on its DRAM chips were reduced to 23.78 percent from 44.29 percent, resulting in the company receiving $1.4 million plus accrued interest from the authorities.
In 2005, Hynix paid $2.9 million in countervailing duties on its DRAM chips sold in the U.S.
``The amount reduced last year as we have been exporting chips produced in our Chinese plant,’’ Park said.
In April, the Council of the European Union lifted countervailing duties imposed on the import of Hynix’ products retroactively effective from Dec. 31, last year.
The council imposed a duty of 34.8 percent on imports of DRAMs made by Hynix in 2003, alleging that its bailout by government-linked creditor banks amounted to unfair subsidies. The tariffs were cut to 32.9 percent in 2006.
In a similar step, the World Trade Organization is giving Japan until Sept. 1 to change its punitive charges on imports from Hynix to conform with global trade rules. Seoul complained to the WTO about a 27.2 percent charge Tokyo levies on imports of the company’s DRAMs.
The state-run Korea Development Bank wants to sell its shares in Hynix to speed up its privatization process.