The fol­low­ing is an of­fi­cial press re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion.

Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion Tri­cia Coos­al be­lieves that the Gov­ern­ment is head­ed in the right di­rec­tion thus far in its fight against il­lic­it trade. In re­sponse to the var­i­ous me­dia ar­ti­cles, she said, “The TTMA is cog­nisant of the var­i­ous seizures of items by the dif­fer­ent reg­u­la­to­ry and law en­force­ment agen­cies dur­ing the past few months, which demon­strates to the lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing com­mu­ni­ty that the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about re­duc­ing the preva­lence of il­lic­it trade”. These items in­clude al­co­hol, cig­a­rettes, footwear, wrap­ping pa­per, in­halers, elec­tron­ics, il­lic­it drugs and cash. Ku­dos must be giv­en to the Mul­ti-Agency Task Force, which is led by ACP Haynes of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and com­pris­es key mem­bers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion, and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Bu­reau of Stan­dards. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the cre­ation of the An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Task Force (AIT­TF) and its var­i­ous Work­ing Groups sig­nals to the pri­vate sec­tor that there would be mean­ing­ful in­ter­ven­tions to ad­dress this scourge on so­ci­ety. 

How­ev­er, man­u­fac­tur­ers still be­lieve that there are oth­er ac­tiv­i­ties which must be em­ployed by the Gov­ern­ment to ef­fec­tive­ly tack­le il­lic­it trade. Specif­i­cal­ly, man­u­fac­tur­ers are hop­ing for the suc­cess­ful im­ple­men­ta­tion of mea­sures pre­scribed in the Gov­ern­ment’s Na­tion­al Ac­tion Plan, in­clud­ing:  

Strength­en­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of Min­istries and en­force­ment agen­cies to com­bat il­lic­it trade – Con­tin­u­ous train­ing of en­force­ment of­fi­cials is im­por­tant. As the meth­ods for con­duct­ing il­lic­it trade con­tin­ue to evolve, so too should the knowl­edge and in­fra­struc­ture of the var­i­ous reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, in­clud­ing the use of ref­er­ence pric­ing. Ref­er­ence pric­ing pro­vides the au­thor­i­ties with a bench­mark price by which to gauge whether a prod­uct is en­ter­ing the mar­ket at the mar­ket price, or at a be­low-mar­ket price. A be­low-mar­ket price would strong­ly sug­gest il­lic­it trade. 
Pro­mot­ing pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships to­wards fight­ing il­lic­it trade – TTMA firm­ly be­lieves that the fight against il­lic­it trade can be won if both Gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sec­tor work to­geth­er to ad­dress the is­sue. 
In­creas­ing pub­lic aware­ness of il­lic­it trade and the as­so­ci­at­ed dan­gers – The Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign would help curb the de­mand for these prod­ucts by con­sumers. 

Fur­ther­more, the As­so­ci­a­tion as­serts that the fol­low­ing ac­tiv­i­ties should be con­sid­ered by the Gov­ern­ment: 

Free Trade Zone re­form – Sev­er­al or­gan­i­sa­tions in­clud­ing the Eco­nom­ic In­tel­li­gence Unit (EIU), the OECD, and the Transna­tion­al Al­liance to Com­bat Il­lic­it Trade (TRACIT) have de­vel­oped rec­om­men­da­tions to en­sure that free trade zones do not act as havens for il­lic­it trade. TTMA rec­om­mends that the Gov­ern­ment re­views and adopt the rec­om­men­da­tions from these agen­cies. 
Re­view of Fis­cal Pol­i­cy – An in­ap­pro­pri­ate tax­a­tion regime would re­sult in the cre­ation of par­al­lel mar­kets for le­git­i­mate goods. In­creased tax­es have pro­vid­ed an in­cen­tive for per­sons to smug­gle goods and to sell those at a low­er sell­ing price. 
Pros­e­cu­tion of Crim­i­nals – Suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of the per­sons in­volved in these acts would serve as a de­ter­rent to po­ten­tial im­porters and con­sumers of these items. 
Ro­bust Bor­der Con­trols – At­ten­tion must be placed to en­sur­ing that il­lic­it trade is stopped at the bor­der, since these prod­ucts tend to be smug­gled in via le­gal and il­le­gal ports of en­try. In­creased mon­i­tor­ing by the au­thor­i­ties and ef­fec­tive de­tec­tion of il­lic­it trade is im­por­tant. 

In clos­ing, Ms. Coos­al in­di­cat­ed that the TTMA sup­ports the fight against il­lic­it trade, and would con­tin­ue to do its part to re­duc­ing the preva­lence of il­lic­it trade in Trinidad and To­ba­go.