Latest update November 13th, 2024 1:00 AM
Oct 04, 2024 News
Kaieteur News – Against the background of a rapid growth in Chinese businesses across Guyana, citizens have raised concerns about the viability of their enterprises and have called on government to intervene urgently.
Earlier this week residents of Agricola took to the streets to protest the establishment of a Chinese supermarket in their area. Vice President (VP) Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday in response to a question by Kaieteur News on issue said that the regulatory bodies need to uniformly enforce the laws on these Chinese businesses. Jagdeo explained that he has been in contact with citizens and they have claimed that they are being displaced by Chinese nationals establishing businesses in their communities. On the other hand, he said there are other business person who are pro-Chinese and rent their properties to them so they can do business, saying that there are no payment issues even if they are suppliers.
He stated that there is the argument that there are cases where the Chinese business owners often times bypass regulatory approval and the agencies responsible for enforcing the regulations do not hold them accountable in according with the laws of the country. “So they (Guyanese) put up a building that breaches the building permits, no ventilation there on the building, they will get a visit from the inspector who says to sell pharmaceuticals here you have to have proper ventilation, but next door there is a Chinese company selling pharmaceuticals but there is no ventilation whatsoever, they are not applying the law uniformly,” the VP said.
Explaining that to sell certain items like alcohol there are different permits needed, Jagdeo highlighted that some of these Chinese entities sell everything under the sun without having the necessary permissions in place and this should not be so. “One may go to a store to buy nails and want a beer, a shop next door may have the permit to sell the beer but you would buy it from the store you are currently in because it’s convenient at the time even though they do not have the approval to distribute alcoholic beverages.”
This is one of the other avenues that Guyanese are highlighting as a disadvantage and Jagdeo said that “the Guyana Revenue Authority does not pay careful attention for payment of VAT and other things, or hold them accountable for paying VAT and other taxes that they have to pay. “So we have made it clear to the regulatory bodies you have to enforce the laws uniformly and we believe that sometimes people are induced not to do that so we are paying careful attention to this,” Jagdeo said.
He made it clear that government will discriminate against a business based on the owner’s nationality and once a foreign national is accepted into the country there are no restrictions here to prevent them from opening shop. “So we cannot say oh the Chinese can’t open business here, it’s reserved for Canadians or Americans can’t open businesses here it’s reserved for people from India or some part of the world. You can’t place restrictions on opening business based on nationality. It would not only be against the World Trade Organisation rules but it would run you into a very difficult foreign policy situation,” the VP noted.
From a competition disadvantage point of view he admitted that the persons protesting are in their right to do so, adding that if he was in that position he would have done the same thing if he was next to a business owned by a foreigner who wasn’t observing the laws of his native land. “So that’s how we approach it, but we can’t if the idea is to stop people based on nationality, it would be impossible to do it. You cannot do that discriminate on the basis of nationality, but you can ensure compliance with the laws of the country. So they have to pay their fair taxes, they have to look at all of the regulations and if our people are not allowed to sell multiple things in a single store then they must not too,” he added.
Nov 13, 2024
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