Summit communiqué charges unfair, discriminatory treatment of region

Guyana has joined the rest of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in expressing concern over the implications of Britain’s increased Air Passenger Duty (APD) for the region’s tourism and travel industries.

Guyana is one of scores of Carib-bean, African, Pacific and Latin American countries listed as destinations to which passengers travelling from the United Kingdom are required to pay an APD, reportedly a green measure aimed at taxing aviation’s carbon emissions as of November 1 last year.

Until October 31, 2009 there were four rates of duty – twenty pounds for specified European destinations, and ten pounds and forty pounds, respectively, as reduced rates for European and other destinations. With effect from November 1, 2009 the British government introduced a four-destination band structure based on geographical distance from London, each having two rates of duty depending on the class of travel.  Bands are based on the distance between London and the capital of the destination country. Guyana, along with other CARICOM countries, has been placed in Band C which  attracts an APD of one hundred pounds and a reduced duty of fifty pounds.

Britain is likely to rake in an estimated three billion pounds in taxes as a result of the new APD rates and Rifal is quoted as saying that the people who will suffer from the new British tax will be developing countries.

The new APD came into force last November despite a vigorous CARICOM lobby which peaked late last year at the annual World Travel Market trade show in London where several CARICOM governments were represented. Several British parliamentarians also lobbied the House of Commons during 2008 and 2009 in an attempt to stop the imposition of the APD.

CARICOM tourism and travel officials have argued that the APD discriminates against the region in favour of the United States by determining that all of the US and Hawaii is closer to London than all of the Caribbean.

At last week’s CARICOM summit in Dominica Heads of government expressed concern that the new measures would prove particularly damaging to the region at a time of falling visitor arrivals resulting from the global recession, particularly since the United Kingdom is the Caribbean’s leading tourist market. The customary communiqué issued at the conclusion of the Roseau summit quoted the conference as reiterating “its concern about the deleterious effect of the Air Passenger Duty on tourism, the Community’s most important economic sector, and its related industries, and pointed out that the ‘band’ in which CARICOM member states had been placed was unfair, discriminatory and placed them at a competitive disadvantage.” CARICOM tourism ministers have previously noted the irony of such measures being imposed on the most tourism-dependent region in the world and on countries with no or low carbon emission.

Britain has also come in for criticism from the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization who said last week in Berlin that the British government had turned a deaf ear to worldwide appeals for a reform of the APD.