GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of Bas­tion Mar­ket In­tel­li­gence Ltd in Port-of Spain, Roger Mon­tero, be­lieves that if the prob­lems of il­lic­it trade are ad­dressed, then this coun­try can get an im­proved rank­ing in the next Glob­al Il­lic­it Trade En­vi­ron­ment In­dex.

In a state­ment Mon­tero not­ed that il­lic­it trade forms two parts.

First­ly, ac­cord­ing to him, is the most tan­gi­ble and in­cludes the traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics, hu­mans, weapons, cig­a­rettes, al­co­hol, wildlife and so on.

The sec­ond and most in­tan­gi­ble part, he said, is be­ing car­ried out vir­tu­al­ly, and is com­mon­ly known as cy­ber-at­tacks, where crim­i­nal el­e­ments hack in­to your com­put­er or mo­bile sys­tems and can hold you to ran­som.

This in­volves the use of mal­ware, spy­ware and pass­word hack­ing.

“It is be­com­ing more and more per­va­sive,” Mon­tero said.

The in­dex, pro­duced by the Econ­o­mist In­tel­li­gence Unit and Com­mis­sioned by the Transna­tion­al Al­liance to Com­bat Il­lic­it Trade was last pub­lished in 2018, and ranked T&T as num­ber 75 out of 84 coun­tries.

The in­dex mea­sures the ex­tent to which economies en­able (or in­hib­it) il­lic­it trade through their poli­cies and ini­tia­tives to com­bat il­lic­it trade.

It ex­am­ines four main cat­e­gories: gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy, sup­ply and de­mand, trans­paren­cy and trade, and the cus­toms en­vi­ron­ment.

Re­gard­ing brand own­er­ship, Mon­tero said the ma­jor­i­ty of brand­ed cloth­ing be­ing sold in T&T are ei­ther coun­ter­feit or brought in as con­tra­band.

“Dis­trib­u­tors are con­cerned with mak­ing mon­ey, and are not help­ing to in­crease aware­ness on il­lic­it­ly trad­ed goods – and that’s what they need to do. You will find prod­ucts from Trinidad in oth­er mar­kets which were smug­gled in as con­tra­band, and even shipped back to Trinidad for re­sale,” he added.

Mon­tero said the rea­son this oc­curs is be­cause when the prod­uct/good is man­u­fac­tured lo­cal­ly, the prices for each end mar­ket are dif­fer­ent hence peo­ple take ad­van­tage of that, adding that goods are al­so moved eas­i­ly across the re­gion.

“The con­tra­band we are talk­ing about is not just a cou­ple of items here and there, but huge quan­ti­ties,” he added.

Mon­tero al­so cau­tioned reg­u­lar on­line shop­pers say­ing there is a high per­cent­age of il­lic­it­ly trad­ed goods on ma­jor well-known web­sites.

“What the sell­ers do is send the items to these web­sites for ver­i­fi­ca­tion, but when they re­ceive an or­der and patch it through, it is the il­le­git­i­mate prod­uct that is be­ing sold. If it is not a prod­uct from the re­al man­u­fac­tur­er, then it is deemed il­le­gal,” he said.

On whether some­one can pur­chase an item, for ex­am­ple, house­hold items on on­line sites and re-sell it for a prof­it, Mon­tero said once tax­es are paid it is not il­lic­it trade, ex­cept in cas­es where it says the prod­uct is specif­i­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured for an­oth­er coun­try.

He not­ed it im­pos­si­ble to stop smug­gling in the coun­try, un­less there is an ac­tive Com­pli­ance Unit to go around and phys­i­cal­ly check.

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) Gre­go­ry Aboud said if penal­ties and sanc­tions are to be ap­plied to those in­volved in il­lic­it trade it should come from an in­de­pen­dent agency, free of po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence but with guar­an­teed fund­ing.

“The agency will not be­hold­en to any po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate, mem­ber of so­ci­ety, busi­ness­man, pri­vate sec­tor group or NGO. It will be able to func­tion in­de­pen­dent­ly and be mea­sured based on their en­force­ment.

“Un­til that hap­pens, en­force­ment is a moot and use­less ques­tion,” Aboud said.

He agreed there is mas­sive il­lic­it trade tak­ing place in the coun­try with fake and coun­ter­feit brand­ing and this is par­tic­u­lar­ly caused by Pana­ma which is a great pur­vey­or of fake prod­ucts, and this pos­es a se­ri­ous prob­lem for the coun­try,

Aboud said it al­so cre­ates an un­fair sit­u­a­tion where those with es­tab­lished busi­ness­es and known brands must face the scruti­ny of the Bu­reau of Stan­dards, while fake prod­ucts are brought in­to the coun­try with lit­tle or no over­sight.

He not­ed for far too long, there are those who ben­e­fit­ed from not pay­ing their tax­es and it is de­stroy­ing the econ­o­my.

“The very busi­ness­men who are con­tribut­ing to­wards the tax rev­enue—that is giv­ing mon­ey to Gov­ern­ment to do all of the things that it says it has to do —those busi­ness­men are be­ing erod­ed and cor­rod­ed by this un­der­ground in­vis­i­ble trade, where a blind eye is turned to this so called par­al­lel trade which gives non-tra­di­tion­al busi­ness peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op, and while no one is against giv­ing these per­sons a chance to be en­tre­pre­neurs they nev­er de­vel­op any sus­tain­able skills,” Aboud added.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, he not­ed has brought T&T’s econ­o­my in­to ques­tion, and he pre­dict­ed that there will be a sharp de­crease in lo­cal con­sump­tion, un­til the ma­jor economies like Eu­rope and the Unit­ed States re­open their busi­ness­es and trad­ing.