Jesse Ramdeo

The pres­i­dent of the George­town Cham­ber of Com­merce and In­dus­try has stressed that trade re­la­tions be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Guyana rest on the shoul­ders of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­diaon Thurs­day, Tim­o­thy Tuck­er ex­plained that based on how Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley treats Guyana’s busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, it will de­ter­mine his lega­cy.

Tuck­er’s com­ment fol­lowed his re­cent ap­peal to Guyana Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali not to sign a pro­posed MoU on agri­cul­ture, en­er­gy and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty with Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to Tuck­er, there should be no agree­ment un­til non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers by T&T against Guyana are re­moved. He stat­ed that his cham­ber has been ap­peal­ing for the lift­ing of the bar­ri­ers for sev­er­al years.

He said trade re­la­tions have been strained over the years and Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley must take the nec­es­sary steps to im­prove the cli­mate.

He said, “The GC­CI has a sig­nif­i­cant amount of Trinidad busi­ness­es that are mem­bers of the as­so­ci­a­tion on our side, we’re al­ways wel­com­ing, on the flip side, get­ting in­to Trinidad is like es­cap­ing from Al­ca­traz in the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. It’s been deemed very hos­tile over the years, very pro­tec­tion­ist-ori­ent­ed.”

Among the non-tar­iff bar­ri­ers on Guyana’s trade with Trinidad and To­ba­go are a ban on the im­por­ta­tion of poul­try meats from Guyana, trans-ship­ment of hon­ey, for­mal­i­sa­tion of re­spons­es to mar­ket ac­cess dossiers sub­mit­ted and the de­nial of im­por­ta­tion of items al­ready ap­proved for im­por­ta­tion through per­mits, he said.

Tuck­er ex­plained that he will not back down on calls to block the pro­posed MoU, which Row­ley is cur­rent­ly in Guyana to sign off on.

“The in­struc­tions or the rul­ings have been passed in­struct­ing Trinidad to re­move some of these bar­ri­ers and they’re not ad­her­ing to it. So in good faith, if we go­ing to have co­op­er­a­tion, we al­ready have pri­vate sec­tor co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two coun­tries, so now its from the gov­ern­ment stand point.”

Mean­while, T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce CEO Ian De Souza said it was im­por­tant both coun­tries work to­geth­er at im­prov­ing and in­creas­ing re­gion­al trade.

“It is hoped that the con­cerns would have been ad­dressed in the dis­cus­sions be­tween Row­ley and Ali and that the pro­posed Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing would have been de­signed to bring some form of res­o­lu­tion to the is­sues,” De Souza said.

He said the cham­ber sup­port­ed the need for eq­ui­table trad­ing agree­ments.

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