WORLD TRADE
ORGANIZATIONG/SG/N/1/THA/2
17 December 1999
(99-5479)
Committee on Safeguards Original:  English
NOTIFICATION OF LAWS, REGULATIONS AND ADMINISTRATIVE
PROCEDURES RELATING TO SAFEGUARD MEASURES
THAILAND
The following communication, dated 14 December 1999, has been received from the
Permanent Mission of Thailand.
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Ministry of Commerce Notification
on
Safeguard Measures
B.E. 2542
Recognizing the need to safeguard the domestic industry from injury caused by increased
imports of the product pursuant to Agreement on Sa feguard of the World Trade Organization;  with
authority as prescribed by Article 5 of the Import-Export Act B.E. 2522;  the Minister of Commerce,
under an approval of the Cabinet, decrees as follows:
Section 1  This Notification is called “Ministry of Commerce Notification on Safeguard
Measures B.E. 2542”.
Section 2  This Notification is effective upon the first consecutive day after the date of its
publication in the Royal Gazette.
Section 3  In this Notification;
3.1 The term “safeguard measures” means specified measures, prescribed under the Authority of
the Import-Export Act B.E. 2522 so as to prevent an  emergence of injury incurred from increased
imports of the product, which are exemplified as  a collection of premium upon importation or
quantitative restrictions.
3.2 The term “increased imports of the product” means that the product is being imported into
Thailand in such increased quantities, absolute or relative to domestic production.
3.3 The term “injury” means serious injury or threat of serious injury caused by the imports to a
domestic industry on the basis of objective evidence.
3.4 The term “domestic industry” means the domestic producers as a whole of the like or directly
competitive products or domestic producers of like or directly competitive products, of which
combined output constitutes a major proportion of the total production in Thailand, provided thatG/SG/N/1/THA/2
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The term “Like products” means products which are identical in all respects, or whose
characteristics significantly resemble those of imported products.
3.5 The term “interested parties” includes:
3.5.1 foreign producers or exporters, or trad e or business association, most members of
which are producers or exporters of such products.
3.5.2 the governments of the foreign exporting countries;3.5.3 importers or domestic producers of like or directly competitive products or trade or
business associations, a majority of the members of which are importers or producers of such
products;
3.5.4 any legal persons determined to be an interested party by the Department of Foreign
Trade.
3.6 The term “Committee” means the Committee on Safeguard Measures.
Section 4  Submission and Determination of petition for safeguard investigation
4.1 A domestic industry may submit a written petition to the Department of Foreign Trade,
requesting an initiation of an investigation for the purpose of applying safeguard measures against
increased imports of the product causing injury.
Information and evidence supporting an existence of the injury to domestic market from
increased imports shall be furnished by petitioners to the Department of Foreign Trade.
If the Department of Foreign Trade determines that there is a ground for complaint, it shall
initiate an investigation.
4.2 In cases where the Department of Foreign Trade considers that there exist increased imports
causing the injury or threatening to cause the injury to domestic industry, the Department of ForeignTrade may initiate an investigation.
Section 5  Investigation
The Department of Foreign Trade shall investigate in accordance with the following
procedure:
5.1 Publishing a notice of initiation in official publication or using other appropriate means for
public notice indicating a type of imported product, the date of initiation, and a summary of
preliminary information and notifying to all interested parties.
5.2 Throughout an investigation, the Department of Foreign Trade shall provide timely
opportunity for interested parties presenting evid ence and their views, supporting or arguing the
presentations of other parties, particularly whether an investigation would benefit public interest.
Any information which is by nature confidential or which is provided on a confidential basis
shall, upon good cause shown, be treated as such by the Department of Foreign Trade.  Such
information shall be disclosed only with specific pe rmission of the party submitting it. In such case,
the Department of Foreign Trade shall require interested parties providing confidential information toG/SG/N/1/THA/2
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furnish non-confidential summaries.  If such parties indicate that such information is not susceptible
of summary, a statement of reasons why summarization is not possible must be provided.
In case that the Department of Foreign Trade finds that a request for information being treated
as confidential is not warranted and that the supplier of the information is unwilling to make theinformation public, the Department of foreign Trade may disregard such information unless it can be
demonstrated to its satisfaction from related agencies that the information is correct.
5.3 In a deliberation of whether the increased imports cause the injury, the Department of Foreign
Trade shall evaluate all relevant factors. In particular;
5.3.1 The rate of increase and amount of the increased imports,
5.3.2 The share of the domestic market taken by increased imports,
5.3.3 changes in the levels of sales,
5.3.4 production,
5.3.5 productivity,
5.3.6 capacity utilization,5.37 profit and loss,
5.3.8 employment.
5.4 In determining the injury referred to in paragraph 5.3, the investigation must clearly
demonstrate that such injury is directly resulted from the increased imports.  When factors other thanincreased imports are causing injury at the same  time, such injury shall not be brought into
consideration.
5.5 If the investigation result indicates that such increased imports cause injury, the Department
of foreign Trade shall report its findings and propose an application of safeguard measures to theCommittee.
5.6 If the investigation result indicates that the increased imports do not cause injury, the
Department of Foreign Trade shall terminate the investigation.
Section 6   Safeguard measures shall be applied to imports of the product from all sources and
shall be enacted according to th e following rules and conditions:
6.1 Safeguard measures shall be implemented only to the extent necessary to prevent or remedy
injury and to facilitate adjustment of the domestic industry concerned.
In order to promote effectiveness of the measure implementation and to be consistent with
such conditions in paragraph one, the domestic industry petitioning for an investigation is required toprovide an adjustment plan to the Department of Foreign Trade during the three-month period after
the date on which safeguard measure is applied.
6.2 When a quantitative restriction is used, such a measure shall not reduce the quantity of
imports below the level of past imports, unless clear justification is given that lower level of importsis necessary to prevent or remedy injury.
Past import quantities, as prescribed previously, shall be the average imports in the last three
years.  In case that there is no import in all the last three years, the available import statistics shall be
used.
6.3 When an import quota is to be implemented, an agreement with respect to the allocation of
shares in the quota may be made with all other exporting countries having a substantial portion of theG/SG/N/1/THA/2
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imports.  If such quota management can not be agreed to, quota shall be allocated to such countries
according to the proportions of the total volume or value of such imports during an appropriate period.
If there are increased imports with disproportionate rate in relation to the total increase of
imports of the products concerned, the authorities may depart from the above-mentioned approachprovided that any other adopted action shall be in compliance with obligations under Agreement.
6.4 Safeguard measures shall not be applied against a product originating in a developing country
as long as its share of Thai imports of the product concerned does not exceed 3 per cent of the total
imports of such product, provided that developing countries with less than 3 per cent import share
collectively account for not more than 9 per cent of total imports of the product concerned.
Section 7   Provisional Safeguards Measures
When the preliminary determination indicating that there is clear evidence that increased
imports cause injury inducing a situation called “critical circumstances” where delay would cause
damage which it would be difficult to repair, the Department of Foreign Trade may propose the
Committee to notify an application of the provisional safeguard measure in the form of premiumcollection on such imports at an appropriate rate.
Such collection of duties as prescribed in paragraph one shall not exceed two hundred (200)
days.
If the final determination indicates that such increased imports have not caused injury, the
collected duties shall be refunded without delay.
Section 8   Duration of Safeguard Measures
The application of safeguard measures shall be used only for such period of time as may be
necessary, which shall not exceed four (4) years after the date of application.
If the duration of measure is in effect for more than one (1) year, such a measure shall be
progressively liberalized during the period of application until the situation recedes to normal state
before the measure application.
If it is determined, as prescribed in Section 5, that the safeguard measure continues to be
necessary to prevent injury and that there is evidence that the domestic industry is in the process of
adjustment, such a measure may be extended provided that the combined period of the measure is no
longer than ten (10) years and the measure shall be in conformity with the procedures set out in the
second paragraph of Section 6.1 and in paragraph two of this section.
The extended measure as prescribed in paragraph three shall not be more restrictive than the
measure which existed prior to the extension.
Upon expiration of the measure, no safeguard measure shall be applied again to the import of
a product which has been subject to such a measure for one-half (1/2) of a period of time that suchmeasure had been previously applied, provided that the period of non-application is at least two (2)
years.
The safeguard measure with a duration of no more than one hundred and eighty (180) days
may be applied again to the import of a product if: at least one (1) year has elapsed since the date ofintroduction of a safeguard measure on the import of that product; and such a safeguard measure hasG/SG/N/1/THA/2
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not been applied on the same product more than twice in the five-year (5) period immediately
preceding the date of the introduction of the measure.
In case that a safeguard measure is to be applied or extended and that it is necessary to enter
into agreements with exporting countries to compen sate for the adverse effects of the measure on their
trade, conforming with the WTO Agreement on Safeguards, the Department of Foreign Trade shall
forward the issue to the Cabinet for approval.
Section 9   Upon applying a safeguard measure or terminating an investigation, the
Department of Foreign Trade shall make public the findings as well as details of an investigation.
Section 10   Reviews of Safeguard Measures
If the duration of safeguard measure exceeds three (3) years, the Department of Foreign Trade
shall review the situation not later than the mid-term of the measure.  If appropriate, such a measure
shall be withdrawn or be increased the pace of liberalization by proposing to the Committee for
consideration.
Section 11   The Committee
11.1 There shall be a committee entitled “The Committee on Safeguard Measures”.  The
committee is composed of the Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Commerce who serves asChairman, representatives from Ministry of Finance, representatives from Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
representatives from Ministry of Industry, representatives from Ministry of Agriculture and
Cooperatives, Director-General of the Department  of Foreign Trade, Director-General of the
Department of Internal Trade, Director-General of  the Department of Business Economics, and seven
(7) expert members appointed by the Ministry of Commerce.
The individuals to be appointed as expert members of the Committee under provision of the
first paragraph shall be experts in fields of international trade, economics, accounting, law, industry,
and agriculture.
The Director-General of the Department of Foreign Trade shall appoint officers of the
Department of Foreign Trade to serve as secretary and assistant secretary to the Committee.
11.2 The Committee shall have the following authorities and duties:
(1) to perform their duties involving safeguard measures under this Notification
(2) to approve or reject undertakings with exporting countries(3) to perform other duties as designated under this notification or by the Minister of
Commerce.
11.3 Each expert member of the Committee shall have a term of office of six (6) years
At the end of the first two-year (2) period, three-sevenths (3/7)  of the expert members of the
Committee shall retire by way of lot-drawing, and when the period of four (4) years is reached, the
one-half (1/2) of the Committee remaining from the fi rst lot-drawing shall retire by also way of lot-
drawing.  The retirement of such members by way of drawing is to be considered a retirement by
rotation.
11.4 In addition to retirement by rotation, the expert members of the Committee shall
automatically retire upon the following;G/SG/N/1/THA/2
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(1) death,
(2) resignation,
(3) request by the Minister to resign due to inappropriate behavior, dishonesty, or
inefficiency on role of the expert member,
(4) adjudication by the final court decision of imprisonment except in cases in which
such adjudication results from offences involving negligence or petty crimes,
(5) Incompetence or Semi-Incompetence
(6) bankruptcy.
11.5 Where an expert member of the Committee retires prior to the end of his term, a new member
shall be appointed in an expeditious manner. If the remainder of the term for which a new expert
member would be appointed is less than ninety (90) days, it is possible not to appoint anyone to fillthe post.
The term of office of a newly appointed expert member referred to in the first paragraph shall
be the remaining term of the retiring expert member.
11.6 A meeting of the Committee shall be valid only when no less than half (1/2) of the Committee
members are present.  If the Chairman is not present at the meeting or is unable to perform the
assigned functions, the deputy Chairman shall act in his stead.  If neither the Chairman nor the Deputy
Chairman is present at the meeting or able to perform his assigned duties, the members in attendance
shall elect an acting Chairman among themselves.
A decision of the Committee shall be made by a majority vote of all members present at each
meeting. Each member has one (1) vote. In the event of a tie, the chairman shall cast the final,
decisive vote.
Dissenting views together with reasons thereof which are offered during any session shall be
recorded in the minutes of the Committee.  Any member of the Committee may request the
incorporation of his dissenting view into the determination.
11.7 For the purpose of performing its duties and functions, the Committee may appoint a sub-
committee for any specific duty.
Section 12   When there is an initiation of procedures for applying a safeguard measure under
this notification, the Department of Foreign Trade shall cooperate with other concerned authorities to
expeditiously maintain proceedings in conformity with obligations under Agreement on Safeguards
and World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements.
Section 13  The Ministry of Commerce shall be responsible for the administration of this
notification.
Made on 10 June B.E. 2542 (1999)
H.E. Dr. Supachai Panitchapakdi
Minister of Commerce
Re:  This Notification is effective on 9 July B.E. 2542 (1999)
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