Is Guyana a banana republic?

Dec 06, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

There was a time in Guyana when you could not get a bottle of Limacol to buy locally. The reason is that all of the production was exported. Guyanese had to purchase their supplies in Trinidad. A product manufactured in Guyana was not available locally.
At one time, there was a multivitamin tonic made in Guyana but which could not be had locally. Persons had to bring in their supplies from the USA.
At one time, Guyana had one of the best nerve tonics in the world. But most of it was exported. It still enjoys great demand in North America among Guyanese resident in the United States and Canada.
We are now living in a globalized age. Goods are being manufactured for specific markets. Some goods manufactured in China are made exclusively for exports. They are not ever going to be sold in China. American companies do the same. They have export products which they make specifically for specific export markets. They are not going to be sold within America.
If your product or its batch is made exclusively for the export market, a free sale certificate is not going to be issued because a free sale certificate indicates that the goods are sold in the markets of the exporting country.
How is someone to obtain a free sale certificate from China or even America when the product for which certification is required is not sold in the domestic market. If free sale certificates were required for all food items entering the United States from China and elsewhere, then a number of products would be barred entry.
The local health authorities are reportedly asking local importers for a whole bundle of paperwork for the importation of food stuff. The local health authorities are claiming to acting in accordance with our food safety laws. These laws were intended to place a hindrance on trade. They were mainly designed to ensure that food imported in Guyana was suitable for human consumption. They were not intended to ensure that they were necessarily healthy. If this were the case a lot of the foods on our supermarket shelves high in salt and fats would have already been prohibited.
The health authorities have to ensure that only food suitable for human consumption is allowed to be sold for such purposes. It is hard to see how a free sale certificate ensures that food imported is healthy. The logic behind the request for a free sale certificate is that a manufacturing country will not allow an unhealthy product to be sold locally and therefore, evidence that a product is distributed in the market of the exporting country is used as evidence that the product is healthy for that market and therefore healthy for export. There is a serious flaw in this argument because the issuance of a certificate that a product is sold in the exporting market does not make it healthy for the importing country.
The health authorities have to be concerned with products and not importers. Once a food product is examined and assessed as being suitable for human consumption, there is no need for every shipment of that product to be certified. If I am bringing in Blue Bull soda and it is tested and approved for sale in Guyana, then it is unreasonable to ask me, the importer, to go through that same approval process for every shipment.
If such a system is employed it will stymie international trade in food products because it means that every single importation of a food item has to be examined and paper work produced. The country will grind to halt because trade will be encumbered rather than facilitated.
The health authorities cannot be serious if they are asking that every shipment of processed food items must produce health and free sale certificates from the exporting country. What sort of country are we running – a banana republic?
If having approved on the importation of a specific product as being suitable for human consumption, there is either evidence of suspicion that a particular batch may not have met health and safety standards, then the health authorities have the authority under the law to go on the shelves or bonds where those products are either sold or stored respectively and to have the products tested.
But to ask that every shipment produce certain paperwork which has to be sent to the health authorities for approval is unnecessary red tape.
A scientific model of testing food items must be developed. This is how it is done internationally. No importer should be asked for each shipment to produce a free sale certificate and other documentation. This is a ridiculous!