The Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) came to Guyana last week. He was welcomed with open arms by President David Granger. They signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) guaranteeing T&T a role in the developing oil and gas industry in Guyana. Even as they were signing the agreement, T&T was promising to remove non-tariff barriers for Guyana’s honey to enter T&T. This is not the first time T&T is promising Guyana they would remove unfair non-tariff barriers that will allow Guyana’s honey to be exported to T&T. They did so many times before and, each time before, they procrastinated, obfuscated and reneged on their promises, explaining that T&T had to safeguard their local honey industry. Yet one can visit the supermarkets on a daily basis in T&T and purchase honey from the USA at prices not different from the prices for locally produced honey.
Honey was not the only agricultural product from Guyana that T&T did not permit entry for or made it difficult for entry by imposing unreasonable conditions. There is a long list of products from Guyana that T&T has maintained a tough list of non-tariff barriers which prevent our farmers from exporting to T&T. Take the time, they demanded that bran from Guyana be sprayed with methyl bromide before the ship was allowed to land. The ship was already in T&T, ready to dock. The cargo was fumigated with phosphine before the ship left Guyana. Methyl bromide is no longer used in Guyana for this purpose since Guyana is a signatory of the Montreal Protocol that demanded the phasing out of methyl bromide by 2015. By 2014, Guyana had already phased out importation of methyl bromide. T&T, also a signatory to the Montreal Protocol, also had phased out methyl bromide. Clearly, this was a clumsy, fabricated regulation that T&T imposed on Guyana to prevent bran from Guyana entering T&T. T&T felt they had nothing to fear from Guyana, but they would not mess with America.
While an MoU with T&T to explore collaboration in oil and gas is a good thing, the MoU should have demanded that T&T treat Guyanese farmers with greater respect. If T&T continues to utilise unreasonable non-tariff barriers to prevent our products such as pepper, pumpkin, sweet potato, cassava, citrus, coconuts, rice, sugar, beef, mutton, etc, from being exported to T&T, we should be equally unwilling to partner with T&T in our oil and gas industry. I am disappointed, therefore, that President Granger and the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) signed an MoU with T&T without any discussions and any mention of these restrictions that stymie Guyana’s rich agriculture potential. It shows that the APNU/AFC lack vision and is clueless.
In early 2015 when the People’s Progressive Party declared that Guyana is about to be a major global player in the oil and gas industry, the then Leader of the Opposition in Guyana, David Granger, and APNU, together with the AFC, ridiculed the then PPP Government. They argued that our vision of oil and gas as a major player in the economic architecture of Guyana is an election gimmick. As the world now fully accepts the PPP’s claim in 2015 that Guyana is a major player in oil and gas, there are many countries and large global companies that want to partner with Guyana. T&T is no exception, particularly as its own oil and gas industry is waning in importance. I believe that we should welcome T&T as a partner within our oil and gas industry. That welcome should be with open arms, but not with stupidity and not with gullibility. If our agriculture products are not good enough for you, then our oil and gas industry is also off-limits.
T&T has not played fair with Guyana for decades. As we welcome T&T to be a partner in our oil and gas industry, we ask that they play fair with us. T&T must not think they can benefit from our oil and gas industry and that Guyana will turn a blind eye on its unfair trade barriers that limit access to their market for Guyanese products. We must call a spade a spade – T&T has for decades limited entry of Guyana’s agricultural products into T&T based on spurious non-tariff barriers. Whether it is our rice, sugar, tomato, pepper, pineapples, sweet potato, other vegetables, fish and meat, T&T has imposed unreasonable conditions intended to prevent export into T&T from Guyana. To ignore this reality when we signed the MoU with T&T means we sold out our farmers and our country.
