Cross border smuggling is nothing new to Guyana and given our open and ill-protected entry points, restricting the practice requires a level of resources which the Government of Guyana has never quite been able to afford and will probably not be able to afford for a long time.
Setting aside the dangers to national security that inhere in the unmonitored movement of goods of various types both into and out of Guyana, there is also the issue of the dangers to the domestic economy resulting from the competition faced by legitimate importers from goods that do not attract the requisite taxes and duties. In fact, the incidence of smuggling has impacted on fair trading to a point where established businesses have made it clear that they simply cannot survive in the environment.
The border between Guyana and Suriname offers perhaps the best prospects for smuggling and not surprisingly it is the established businesses in Berbice that are hurting the most as a result of the practice though it has to be said that some urban businesses are also being seriously affected. What is also clear is that the efforts of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) to curb the practice through the Berbice Anti-Smuggling Squad (BASS) and other measures have resulted in no more than modest success given the fact that the business community continues to point to what it says is the serious impact of the practice on the viability of legitimate businesses.
Cross-border smuggling is by no means unique to Guyana and wherever the practice exists there has almost always been evidence of involvement by both seemingly legitimate business enterprises seeking to secure unfair advantage as well as by representatives of agencies and sometimes entire agencies charged with policing and restricting the practice. It is a culture that often thrives on alliances between the actual smugglers and those whose job it is to stop or contain them and the significant financial benefits to both sides means that there is every incentive to sustain the practice. From time to time major smuggling rackets are uncovered and disbanded but where such practices have become a way of economic life it is difficult to stop them altogether without committing a level of resources which countries often cannot afford. The other point to be made of course is that smuggling often secures the support of the very communities whose economies are affected by the practice by affording many of the people who live those communities access to cheap, illegally imported items.
GRA Commissioner General Kurshid Sattaur’s seeming dependence on informants to “give us names” of the people involved in smuggling operations reflects a less than enlightened understanding of the culture of smuggling. As Upper Corentyne Chamber President Vishnu Doerga points out the success of such an approach depends entirely on people’s willingness to provide such information. Conceivably, those to whom Mr Sattaur looks to provide the “names” which he seeks may, in all probability, be part of the problem and therefore cannot be expected to be part of the solution. On the other hand, those Berbice businessmen who continue to trade honestly and to suffer in silence would probably be inclined – again in most instances – to weigh the risks involved in becoming informants for the state in matters such as smuggling. In sum, if Mr Sattaur’s plan to stamp out or even restrict the practice of smuggling depends on intelligence gathered from businessmen and civilian informants, it is probably not likely to succeed, and surely he must by now be aware of this.
The other problem of course is the role that state entities and state operatives sometimes play in facilitating smuggling and, often, the fact that the success of some smuggling operations depends on ‘connections’ that provide immunity from the application of any kinds of sanctions. There is really no reason to believe that the characteristics of smuggling in Guyana are different to those that manifest themselves elsewhere and it is perhaps more than a trifle naïve for the Commissioner General not to take seriously the view that has been expressed by some Berbice businessmen that some BASS operatives actually help facilitate the practice. If, as is widely believed, that is in fact the case then the onerous task of fingering smugglers and, moreover, providing the kind of evidence that can lead to legal action becomes far more difficult for ordinary businessmen and whomever else Mr Sattaur is looking to for the names of smugglers.
No one is suggesting, of course, the smuggling can be eradicated in the short term. What is certain, however, is that curbing the practice in Guyana – as is the case elsewhere – depends, in the first instance, on the policing efforts of the authorities. It is, perhaps, both a question of strengthening the existing enforcement mechanisms and, where necessary, doing everything necessary to remove those elements and considerations that facilitate the practice.
The kind of support which Mr Sattaur seeks from the business and civilian communities will come only when those particular communities are persuaded first, that the law-enforcement agencies are themselves serious about stamping out the practice and, secondly, that no one is above the law and, moreover, above legal sanction, no matter the weight of the evidence against them. That would appear to be far from the case at this time.
