16 October 2026, New Delhi: India’s Directorate General of Foreign Trade has extended, for a further six months, a minimum import price restriction on glufosinate and its salts, a widely used non-selective herbicide, keeping tighter conditions on low-priced imports of the chemical in place until April 12, 2027.
The extension, issued as Notification No. 43/2026-27 and dated October 12, 2026, keeps unchanged the terms of the original restriction, which the DGFT first imposed through Notification No. 10/2026-27 on April 13, 2026. That order restricted imports of glufosinate and its salts priced below a combined threshold based on the shipment’s cost, insurance and freight value plus any applicable anti-dumping duty, calculated per kilogram. The restriction applies to glufosinate and its salts classified under eight codes in Chapter 38 of Schedule I (Import Policy) of the ITC (HS) 2022 classification. The notification was issued under Sections 3 and 5 of the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992, with the approval of the Minister of Commerce and Industry.
The move extends a broader pattern of trade protection India has built around glufosinate over the past two years. India’s trade authorities imposed an anti-dumping duty on glufosinate and its salts originating in China around May 2025, after domestic producers argued that underpriced Chinese supply was undercutting local manufacturing. More recently, in mid-2026, the Directorate General of Trade Remedies opened a separate anti-absorption review to examine whether Chinese exporters were lowering their export prices to offset the existing anti-dumping duty, which would blunt its intended effect. Pending that review, customs authorities have been directed to assess relevant imports provisionally and require importers to post financial guarantees against any additional duty that could eventually be imposed.
Glufosinate has become one of the more closely watched herbicides in global trade because of China’s dominant, and at times oversupplied, manufacturing base. Indian producers have periodically pushed for tariff and non-tariff protection to compete with Chinese pricing, while Indian formulators and farmers that rely on imported technical material for finished herbicide products have an interest in how far these restrictions push up landed costs. The minimum import price mechanism works alongside the anti-dumping duty as a second layer of protection, effectively setting a floor price below which customs clearance becomes harder regardless of the duty calculation.
The practical effect of the extension is to remove uncertainty about whether the restriction would lapse in mid-October 2026, confirming instead that the price floor will remain in force through the first half of next year, spanning both the current rabi season and part of the following kharif season.
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