Business and Economic Commentary by Christopher Ram
This column supports President Irfaan Ali’s call in St. Kitts for the removal of artificial barriers to trade within CARICOM. The principle, enshrined in Treaty and incorporated into domestic law, is sound. The Caribbean Single Market and Economy to which Guyana is a signatory frowns on any attempt by a Member State to erect fiscal or administrative walls protecting domestic operations against other members’ goods and services.
The principle applies to every Member State – domestic and regional alike. The Caribbean Court of Justice settled this question in 2014 in Rudisa Beverages & Juices N.V. v The State of Guyana, a case brought by a Surinamese company challenging an environmental tax amendment under the Guyana Customs Act.
The Court may have acknowledged the stated objective of the legislation, but it held that motive and form are irrelevant; effect is what matters. If the effect of an internal fiscal measure alters competitive conditions in favour of locally produced goods as against like goods of Community origin, it is inconsistent with the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas.
Against that legal background, the recent tax amendment introduced by Dr. Ashni Singh in his 2026 Budget, zero-rating locally produced furniture and jewellery, fails at the first hurdle. By the Bill’s plain language, the benefit is confined to Guyanese production. Furniture and jewellery manufactured in other CARICOM states do not enjoy the same treatment. That is differential taxation based solely on origin. Anyone familiar with the Treaty and Rudisa would immediately recognise the difficulty.
In functional terms, it is precisely the type of discriminatory fiscal measure the CCJ warned against. The inconsistency will not go unnoticed within the Community. Guyana has already been required to compensate Rudisa in substantial sums. It would be unfortunate to invite a repetition. The measure should be reconsidered before it produces another avoidable and embarrassing defeat.
But there is a broader issue. Guyana produces gold in abundance. No other CARICOM country does. It has commercially harvested timber. No other CARICOM country comes close. To attempt to protect such businesses defies economic logic and raises the question of the kind of private sector we are trying to build. Protection is not integration. If our manufacturers require origin-based tax advantages to survive within the Single Market, then we are not preparing them to compete regionally: we are mollycoddling them, protecting them from their own inefficiencies.
The asymmetry in regional enterprise is instructive. Republic Bank Limited, a Trinidad and Tobago enterprise, operates profitably in Guyana. Yet not one of our indigenous banks – Citizens Bank, Demerara Bank or GBTI – operates in that country. They appear comfortable in a Guyana market that functions more like a sheltered environment than a competitive one. The pattern repeats across sectors: capital, brands, and services move outward into Guyana far more readily than Guyanese enterprises expand outward into the region.
The pattern repeats elsewhere. Banks DIH Limited gave Barbados the “Banks” beer, which that country has made into a national brand. Yet in Guyana its strategic focus appears to be motor vehicle sales and internal corporate restructuring rather than regional expansion. In that context, it is not without irony that when legal assistance was required, the company retained a Trinidad-based law firm. There is nothing improper in that choice. But it illustrates a broader reality: regional integration appears to flow more readily into Guyana than outward from it.
If President Ali wishes to be taken seriously when he calls on others to dismantle barriers, his actions must be consistent and must avoid enacting measures that privilege domestic production in ways that offend Treaty principles. One would have expected the tabling Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, to be particularly alert to Guyana’s binding obligations under the Treaty and the emphatic direction already given by the CCJ.
If President Ali genuinely believes in the Single Market, then he should be speaking frankly to Guyanese businesses, charging them to go out and exploit the opportunities offered by the CSME, diversifying their markets and earning foreign currency. Not sheltering them from regional competition, but equipping them to compete successfully within it.