-Chamber President
There are positive indications that Suriname may be willing to work with the authorities here to curb the rising tide of smuggling of consumer goods into Guyana across the Corentyne river according to President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chandradat Chintamani.
Speaking with Stabroek Business earlier this week Chintamani said that he was “encouraged” by a recent meeting with Suriname Ambassador to Guyana, Manorma Soeknandan during which the issue was raised. “I was pleasantly encouraged by the meeting”, Chintamani said.
The note of optimism sounded by the private sector official is in sharp contrast to the difficulties that have been experienced over the years in the bilateral settlement of issues between Guyana and Suriname at the level of the Guyana/Suriname Cooperation Council.
The issue of smuggling and its impact on legitimate trading by businesses operating in Berbice has now become a matter of increased concern in the face of the current economic crisis and Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he was concerned that the major trading houses operating in the Berbice area were suffering from serious loss of patronage as a result of the proliferation of smuggled consumer goods.
Stabroek Business spoke with a representative of the Marketing Department of Courts who said that the company’s Berbice outlet had initially been affected by the proliferation of smuggled items but that this was no longer the case.
The official explained that Courts’ warranties, service contracts and exchange policy, particularly on high-priced electrical and electronics coupled with some “bad experiences” which consumers may have had with cheaper smuggled goods had insulated them.
Chintamani said that apart from the bilateral efforts of the two countries to bring the practice to an end he would also wish to see “a more meaningful effort” on the part of the Customs Anti-Smuggling Unit to curb the practice.
“Apart from the fact that the evasion of the various taxes and duties on smuggled items mean that legitimate businesses find it difficult to compete with the smugglers there is also the question of the millions of dollars in losses to the public treasury which we cannot afford at this time,” he added.
Cigarettes is one of the commodities most frequently smuggled into Guyana from Suriname and Chintamani, who is General Manager of the Demerara Tobacco Company told Stabroek Business that each container of cigarettes smuggled into the country from Suriname results in losses to the public treasury of approximately $30m. Chintamani disclosed that DEMTOCO was investing approximately $150,000 in pursuing its own investigation into smuggling from Suriname into Guyana.
Meanwhile, Chintamani told Stabroek Business that he will be travelling to Suriname in just over a week’s time where he expects to discuss the issue of smuggling with Guyana’s Ambassador in Paramaribo as well as private sector officials in Suriname. Chintamani said that talks over the years between the two governments designed to bring an end to the smuggling problem appeared not to have borne a great deal of fruit since the problem had continued unabated.
He said that he was aware that some smuggled consumer items including electrical goods could be purchased “at significantly lower prices” (as much as 60 per cent lower, in some cases) than similar items being sold at local retail outlets. He said that the authorities here also needed to be concerned with likely problems associated with faulty and inefficient electrical goods which, in sufficiently large quantities, could place a significant strain on the national electricity generation system.