An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

The trade im­passe be­tween this coun­try and Guyanese man­u­fac­tur­er, De­mer­ara Dis­tillers Lim­it­ed (DDL) has been re­solved. 

On Tues­day, the chair­man of DDL, Ko­mal Sama­roo, ex­pressed frus­tra­tion that flavoured wa­ter and milk from his com­pa­ny were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties en­ter­ing the T&T mar­ket. 

DDL Chair­man, Ko­mal Sama­roo com­plained about T&T re­sort­ing to en­forc­ing one of its an­i­mal health laws to re­turn a con­sign­ment of milk val­ued at US$100,000 and de­ten­tion of flavoured wa­ter with a val­ue of be­tween US$30,000 and US$40,000 un­til ad­di­tion­al checks were done. He added that it was the first time that his com­pa­ny was ex­port­ing milk to this coun­try. 

Con­cern­ing the flavoured wa­ter, DDL of­fi­cials said T&T’s au­thor­i­ties asked for a “de­tailed chem­i­cal analy­sis” and a cer­tifi­cate of analy­sis.  

The Guyanese pri­vate sec­tor came out in the de­fence of the com­pa­ny say­ing that the move was un­fair. 

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon and Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Ran­dall Karim, who were in Guyana for the fifty-eighth Meet­ing of the Coun­cil for Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment (COT­ED) met with DDL and the pri­vate sec­tor. 

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Gopee-Scoon said there was no pro­hi­bi­tion on the im­por­ta­tion of an­i­mal prod­ucts in­to this coun­try from any Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber state in­clud­ing Guyana. How­ev­er, she said for these prod­ucts to be ex­port­ed to T&T, coun­tries must be ap­proved by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land, and Fish­eries and this was a one-time ap­proval as­so­ci­at­ed with first-time ex­ports. 

Gopee-Scoon said, “For an im­port per­mit to be is­sued for ‘first-time’ im­ports of milk from any coun­try, a risk analy­sis is re­quired to be un­der­tak­en by the Chief Vet­eri­nary Of­fi­cer (CVO).  This in­for­ma­tion was com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the lo­cal im­porter by the CVO on Fri­day, April 19, 2024, which was the same date an ap­pli­ca­tion was sub­mit­ted on TTBi­zlinK for an an­i­mal per­mit.” 

Fol­low­ing the ex­pla­na­tion and facts giv­en by the min­is­ter, all par­ties agreed that the gen­e­sis of the mat­ter arose out of a mis­un­der­stand­ing by the im­porter of the spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments for the im­por­ta­tion of these prod­ucts in­to this coun­try. 

Gopee-Scoon com­mit­ted to DDL that up­on re­ceipt of the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion, the Gov­ern­ment would ex­pe­di­tious­ly process the reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments for DDL.  

Ko­mal Sama­roo, chair­man of DDL ex­pressed his pro­found thanks for how the mat­ter will be ad­dressed and in­di­cat­ed that his com­pa­ny will work with the au­thor­i­ties in T&T to re­solve the mat­ter. 

The min­is­ter al­so as­sured the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Guyana pri­vate sec­tor that T&T was ful­ly com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing in­tra-re­gion­al Cari­com trade and re­mained open to in­creased im­ports from Guyana and oth­er Cari­com Mem­bers.  

“To fa­cil­i­tate in­creased trade and proac­tive­ly re­solve trade dis­putes be­tween the both coun­tries, it was agreed that a mech­a­nism in the form of a bi­lat­er­al com­mit­tee com­pris­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor from both coun­tries would be soon es­tab­lished,” she added. 

Speak­ing to De­mer­ara Waves on­line fol­low­ing the meet­ing Ramesy Ali, pres­i­dent of the Guayana Man­u­fac­tur­ing and Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (GM­SA), said they are very sat­is­fied with the out­come and that the is­sue was able to be re­solved.  

Ali not­ed that the GM­SA was quite sur­prised this is­sue came up as the lo­cal com­pa­ny was a rep­utable im­porter and had been do­ing busi­ness in the mar­ket for many years.