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Guyana to reinstate CET on Cement

Oct 18, 2009 News

Attorney General Charles Ramson S.C.,on Thursday told reporters that the government is left with no option but to reimpose the Common External Tariff (CET) on Cement imported from outside the region as was ruled by the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ).
Ramson told reporters ahead of the sitting of the National Assembly that Guyana will honour its obligation as decided by the court.
“It’s a step in the process and this attorney- general always does the legal thing, the court order will be observed,” Ramson said briefly.
His remarks came less than a day after the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) denied Guyana’s request for more time to reinstate the CET on extra-regional cement imports.
Trinidad Cement Limited (TCL) and its subsidiary TCL Guyana Inc. (TGI) had moved to the CCJ against Guyana for not imposing the tariff on local importers.
The court on August 20 ruled that this country has 28 days to reimpose the CET.
It also ruled that Guyana breached provisions in the  Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas by failing to implement and maintain the CET since October 2006.
But the Jagdeo-led government has been arguing that reinstituting CET at this time would affect the country’s macroeconomic stability and it needed to maintain the status quo until year-end.
Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon at a media conference on Thursday, said Guyana’s options on the matter were dwindling. However, he maintained that TCL was solely to blame for the state of affairs.
“We’re not in the business of buying and selling cement, we’re in the business of development, and housing development and housing construction is a very important part. The billions that have been spent on preparation of land, building infrastructure, doing squatter settlement rehabilitation — it leads to housing construction, and this bottleneck that has been created by TCL — studiously denied of course by TCL — is the issue here,” Luncheon said.
He noted that Guyana’s move to ease the tax was all in the national interest to ensure that cement was “predictably available” and “competitively priced”.
The Cabinet Secretary said that the Council for Trade and Economic Development’s (COTED) failure to address Guyana’s application for a waiver meant that “one by one our options are being closed off.”

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