Dear Editor,
Now that Guyana has done the honourable thing and admitted that it did break the law as it pertains to the waiver of the Common External Tariff (CET) on cement as a consequence of which it will end up paying a considerable amount to the Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL), I hope that the other member states of Caricom will wake up and stop the illegal activities of not paying the CET on rice.
The Caribbean Rice Association (CRA) along with the Guyanese administration worked very hard to set up the Caricom Monitoring Mechanism for rice, which tells one how much rice comes into the region and whether the relevant duties or taxes are paid.
If one were to investigate these numbers, one would find that many member states do not pay the CET, although no waiver has been granted, especially in the case of St Vincent. When one asks at COTED what will happen next, the answer invariably is, nothing, since they don’t have the authority to prosecute these defaulters.
But with the birth of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), and TCL having won this case resulting in Guyana having to pay out sums of money, I recommend that the administration now look at these defaulters and take them to the CCJ and recover some money for the loss of business and damage to the rice industry.
Yours faithfully,
Beni Sankar
