Opposition being wrongly blamed for CCJ ruling

May 26, 2014 News

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– Greenidge

“It is simply a device for raising money it has nothing to do with the environment. When they went to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) , the government had no case except to blame the opposition that they tried to pass legislation and it’s the opposition’s fault and this is a very childish approach to law.”
This is the assertion of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Executive and Shadow Minister of Finance Carl Greednidge as he spoke to the governments pronouncement that the opposition is responsible for Guyana having to refund $1.2B ($US 6M) to the Suriname beverage company Rudisa.

The company had taken Guyana to the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) because it felt that the $10 per bottle environmental tax that it was being charged when importing its soft drinks (Thrill) to Guyana was in contravention of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) which outlines free trade to signatory countries.
The company had argued that the tax was discriminatory since local importers didn’t have to pay it.
The CCJ had ruled in Rusdisa’s favour, citing that it had to honour its treaty obligations and ordered that the claimants are entitled to repayment.
The government had argued that it had proposed legislation to rectify the discriminatory effect of the environmental tax, but the proposed amendment was rejected by the National Assembly.
Greenidge posited that the governments of Caribbean and members of the Single Market Economy are obliged to respect the market as a Single Market.
He said that within CARICOM if one is going to have taxes in place “on containers which is what is before us then those taxes apply to all containers whether they are imported or produced locally. It is a Single Market; you can’t break it up by putting tariffs against other people within the market, that is the established principle.”
“The government, however notwithstanding I am sure advice from CARICOM, decided to implement that tax…the government failed to remedy the situation and now that the case has been taken to the CCJ, you would’ve thought that government would’ve withdrew the tax in the first place.”
Greenidge made it clear that he spoke only of a tax on containers. “I have said nothing about an environmental tax because I know nothing about the government implementing any environmental tax; it is a tax on imported containers.”
According to Greenidge, “the Caribbean Court told them that the state is indivisible, meaning that the state of Guyana has many elements, government is supposed to represent those elements, the government can’t come and say that within the architecture of the state some unit didn’t do what the government asked it to do.”
He stressed further that “if you are a government and you cannot implement a law you should resign, that is the basic principle.”
“The government in 2013 did bring a proposal, a Bill to the Assembly and the proposal was that they would modify the tax to apply to all Caribbean Countries” he noted.
According to Greenidge the difficulty with that is that the government had on this occasion come to the Parliament with a proposal pertaining to an environmental tax.
He outlined that an environmental tax “provides penalties for actions and materials which are relatively harmful to the environment. So the tax if it is to be an environmental tax, has to provide an incentive to users, consumers and producers to minimize the use of things that would stay and harm the environment for years and provide an incentive for consumers and producers to switch to materials that are biodegradable.”
“The proposal that the government bought had nothing to do with an environmental tax, it did not discriminate against materials that were not biodegradable and therefore both sides of the opposition said to the government, look this is simply another means of raising money, you are now adding other importers to the list to those who pay taxes so instead of moving to a environmental tax all you are doing raising more money.”
He said that the government has to find a means of alleviating the tax burden on the poor. “What about VAT (Value Added Tax), the President had promised to fix that you haven’t fix that so we are not raising anymore money.”
As regards to the environmental tax, Greenidge said that “we are agreeable to a tax which discriminates in favour of bio-friendly material.”
He said further that “when the government finds a tax that looks at the environment we will look at it seriously; until such time as that happens we will not facilitate the government imposing more taxes on Guyanese. If they want they can take off the existing tax because that is what CARICOM is asking them to do.”
Greenidge made it clear that the tax that government has in place “which they call an environmental tax was not implemented at the request of the governments of the Caribbean and I want that to be clear.”
“The government decided that it would raise money and in order to justify it, it told people it was an environmental tax, it has nothing to do with the environment and if you go by the Princess Street canal or the La Penitence outfall there is more rubbish, solid waste dumped into those waters now than before the tax was implemented” said Greenidge.

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