-President says matter being addressed
By Marcelle Thomas
Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL) yesterday called on the government and CARICOM to ensure a level playing field for trade following Trinidad’s rejection of two containers of FDA-approved reconstituted milk the company exported and the placing of a flavoured-water shipment under an onerous import clearance process.
The value of the shipment of milk was pegged at around US$100,000.
“If you are going to accept, as a norm, a different set of rules and different standards, then we can’t have free trade. It has to be on a common basis. The European Union and the North American Free Trade are all on a common basis. You can’t have a set of rules that an exporter to your market got to go through these hurdles, and then you have ready access to everybody else. It is wrong,” DDL Chairman Komal Samaroo yesterday told a hurriedly-summoned press conference.