Peeping Tom may wish to do some research before speculating

May 13, 2014 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Please allow me to comment once again on some faulty logic being promoted by the anonymous columnist known as Peeping Tom. This time it is contained in your Sunday 11th May edition, in a column entitled “The implications of the CCJ’s recent decision”. It concerns the recent Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) decision in the case between the State of Guyana and Rudisa Beverages & Juices N.V. and Caribbean International Distributors Inc. over the environmental tax being imposed by our government on non-returnable beverage containers imported into Guyana from Suriname.
I believe a fair summary of the decision would be that the court ruled that the application of this tax on products from another Caricom member country was in breach of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, and ordered the government of Guyana to cease imposing this tax and to repay the environmental tax which it has collected from the company since 2009 (approximately US$6 million).
It will be recalled that in May of 2013 the government sought to amend the Customs Act by removing section 7 (a) which stipulates the $10 environmental tax on imported containers, and replacing this with a $5 per container tax that would be applicable to local producers as well as importers. This was not approved by the National Assembly for reasons which the political opposition has already explained.
Peeping Tom has amazingly linked these two events to conclude that the opposition’s actions have resulted in Guyana now having to repay over US$6 million to Rudisa. The following excerpt: “If the combined opposition had passed the amendment to the environmental tax laws, Guyana may have avoided such a harsh judgment from the CCJ” indicates that Peeping Tom either does not appreciate the difference between a refund and a compensation payment or is attempting to confuse your readers.
The Government was collecting money that it had no right to collect and now has to return it. Whether or not the opposition had approved the new legislation has no bearing on this fact. Had the legislation been approved the government would still have had to refund any monies collected under section 7 (a) of the Customs Act prior to its removal. The only difference would have been that the government would presumably have implemented the amendments and ceased collecting this particular tax thereby reducing the US$6 million by whatever would have been collected from that point on until October 24th 2013 which is the date up to which the court has calculated the refund.
Perhaps to further malign the opposition, Peeping Tom then goes on to draw a parallel between this and the current political impasse over the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (AML-CFT) – Amendment Bill. The view of the court that the State is not divisible, and any violation by the State is not lessened by considerations of which branch of the State is actually responsible, seems to have gifted Peeping Tom an opportunity to predict a doomsday scenario and then blame the opposition for making it happen.
According to Peeping Tom, “The patience of CFATF is wearing thin. It is not going to hold off much longer in reporting Guyana as non-compliant. This will mean sanctions by the international community. The effects of these sanctions will make the US$6M that Guyana now has to pay to that Surinamese company as a result of the CCJ judgment seem like chicken feed”.
The Guyanese public can do without the constant threat of sanctions. For over a year now we have been besieged by vague references to the terrible consequences of not approving the AML-CFT amendments. It is time for those who have been warning of blacklists and sanctions to be a lot more specific about how Guyana will be affected if it is referred to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) by its regional affiliate body the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) following its (CFATF’s) plenary meeting at the end of this month.
Such details have been conspicuously absent so far, with all the forecasters seemingly satisfied to keep the nation in a state of nervousness rather than prepare us for any challenges resulting from a referral to FATF come month-end. It has also become apparent that many of these persons haven’t a clue about what will happen and are merely repeating what they have been told by others. Peeping Tom may wish to do some research on how FATF actually operates before speculating about sanctions and chicken feed.
Dominic Gaskin

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