GENEVA, Oct 30 (Reuters) - The United States won an appeal on Thursday at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in a dispute over extra duties on Indian imports of wines and spirits.
The U.S. victory is largely moral as India has already lifted most of the additional charges.
In a mixed ruling, the WTO appeal court refrained from making any recommendations to India to make further changes in its import rules.
Both the United States and India had appealed the original ruling in June which rejected a U.S. claim that India was illegally imposing extra duties on imported alcoholic products.
The WTO Appellate Body reversed the panel's finding that the United States had failed to prove that the extra charges broke international trade rules.
The United States, the world's third biggest exporter of spirits and sixth biggest of wine, had complained that extra duties imposed by India on alcohol imports broke its tariff commitments at the WTO.
It said the combined charges meant that U.S. alcoholic beverages faced duties as high as 550 percent, effectively shutting them out of the growing Indian market.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States estimates that India's spirits market was worth $16.2 billion in 2006, making it one of the biggest in the world, but imports account for less than 1 percent of that.
The original WTO dispute panel agreed with India that extra duties were allowed under rules authorising charges that are equivalent to an internal tax, such as those imposed by the Indian states on local alcohol.
India now charges a basic 150 percent duty on imported wine, beer and spirits, the maximum allowed under its WTO commitments. At the time Washington launched the case, the basic duty on wine and beer was 100 percent.
But India was also levying additional duties of 20-75 percent on imported wine and beer and 25-150 percent on imported spirits, reflecting the state taxes on local alcohol products, as well as some other charges, the target of the complaint.
In the face of an earlier complaint by the European Union, India agreed in September 2007 to drop the additional duties but compensated for this by raising the basic wine and spirit duty.
U.S. exports of bourbon whiskey, its principal spirit export, in 2007 totalled $713 million, of which India took less than $830,000, figures from the Distilled Spirits Council show. (For the complete Appellate Body report click on: http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/360abr_e.doc ) (Reporting by Jonathan Lynn; Editing by Angus MacSwan)