The Georgetown Mayor and City Council will be discussing with members of the private sector a $25,000 container tax which the council says has already been implemented.
This is according to Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC) Eddie Boyer and President of the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) Vishnu Doerga.
Town Clerk Royston King told Stabroek News yesterday that businesses unloading containers in the city are already being charged $25,000 for the privilege of using the collectively owned space that is the city parapets.
“Council decided some years ago to charge for the offloading of containers on city streets. They were of the belief that businesses should compensate the city for the use of the space which is collectively owned by all citizens. The fee is expected to aid in speedy clearance of the public spaces,” King explained. Asked how the sum was arrived at, King said it was calculated based on the average size of containers being unloaded within city boundaries. King did not provide any information on when the public was notified of the implementation of the tax.
Boyer said yesterday he is unaware that this charge has been implemented.
“If they have started charging then none of our members are paying. I had not heard about this fee until today,” Boyer who is the Director and Company Secretary of National Hardware Guyana Limited noted. Boyer added that he expected the discussions with the M&CC to be lengthy and in-depth.
According to Stabroek News reports the “container tax” was first proposed by the council in December 1999 as one of several measures to improve the viability of the city by diversifying its revenue base. Also proposed were a fuel tax, a percentage of registration or licence fees for vehicles, transfer of some portion of the environmental tax to the City Council, municipal parking arrangements, and establishment of a port authority, a municipal lottery and the construction of a crematorium.
Despite repeated requests by the then council to meet with government to have these issues discussed and possibly implemented a meeting was not held until December 2010.
At the 2010 meeting officials of the Georgetown Mayor and City Council (M&CC) and the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) met with President Bharrat Jagdeo to discuss a decision by the city to implement a container tax from January 2011.
A report on the meeting quotes then Chairman of the PSC Ramesh Dookhoo, as stating that clarity was being sought after there was an expressed intention to tax containers for parking purposes effective from January 2, 2011.
The meeting with President Jagdeo was sought after dialogue between the M&CC and the Chamber on the issue was unsuccessful and Dookhoo stated that the matter had been amicably resolved with a decision being reached to “shelve” the tax.
“It is now apparent that there is nothing like container taxes so we have clarified the matter in a very definitive way much to our happiness,” Dookhoo had said.
Then Local Government Minister Kellawan Lall had agreed to engage the two parties in a further discussion on the issue which would’ve taken into consideration, parking hours, safety and on-load off-load regulations among others. There is no indication that this discussion ever occurred.
