Lo­cal trade groups have de­nied that ex­porters from this coun­try are en­gag­ing in un­fair trad­ing prac­tices in Ja­maica.

Ja­maican man­u­fac­tur­ers last week raised con­cerns that ex­porters from T&T are vi­o­lat­ing trade rules by mis­rep­re­sent­ing prod­ucts as be­ing of Cari­com ori­gin, al­low­ing them to ben­e­fit from low­er cus­toms du­ties and price ad­van­tages in the lo­cal mar­ket. Goods from Cari­com mem­ber states which meet rules of ori­gin are trad­ed du­ty-free through­out the re­gion. A Com­mon Ex­ter­nal Tar­iff is usu­al­ly ap­plied on prod­ucts orig­i­nat­ing from out­side Cari­com.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) said the or­gan­i­sa­tion is "com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing the process of free and fair trade" among Cari­com mem­ber states "as en­shrined in the Re­vised Treaty of Ch­aguara­mas."

"The as­so­ci­a­tion strong­ly con­demns the prac­tice of any com­pa­ny en­gag­ing in ac­tiv­i­ties that are in breach of the Cari­com Rules of Ori­gin. Such ac­tions cause prob­lems for le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es, and por­tray Trinidad and To­ba­go in a neg­a­tive light both to our Cari­com neigh­bours and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly," the TTMA said in a state­ment.

The group took is­sue with Ja­maica Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (JMA) Pres­i­dent Bri­an Pen­gel­ley who had said: "In oth­er words, you could bring in im­port­ed peanuts, but all you do is put the peanuts in a lit­tle bag... That's not what we call a full con­ver­sion process," though it's un­clear whether Pen­gel­ley was mak­ing ref­er­ence to a sus­pect­ed vi­o­la­tion or just pro­vid­ing an ex­am­ple of how ex­porters can at­tempt to cir­cum­vent rules of ori­gin.

In re­sponse, the TTMA said: "We wish to cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly state that we have found no ev­i­dence to sup­port Mr Pen­gel­ly's state­ment. Shelled peanuts are im­port­ed in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go un­der tar­iff head­ing 1202.20.90 (Shelled Peanuts) then processed [roast­ed, blanched (re­moval of skins), fried, sea­soned and pack­aged] and ex­port­ed un­der tar­iff head­ing 2008.11.00 (Pre­pared Peanuts), there­by meet­ing the cri­te­ria of sub­stan­tial trans­for­ma­tion qual­i­fy­ing for Cari­com orig­i­nat­ing sta­tus."

Al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue was Ex­porTT which said one of its re­spon­si­bil­i­ties is to pro­vide cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of ori­gin (COO) for T&T prod­ucts that are ex­port­ed in­to the Cari­com mar­ket. The agency as­sured that all T&T prod­ucts un­der­go a rigid cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gramme to en­sure they meet trade re­quire­ments to qual­i­fy as lo­cal­ly pro­duced.

"Each ex­port­ing com­pa­ny and ex­port­ed prod­ucts are re­cer­ti­fied at reg­u­lar in­ter­vals. This in­volves our of­fi­cers un­der­tak­ing site vis­its to pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ties and ob­serv­ing the en­tire pro­duc­tion process to en­sure that enough trans­for­ma­tion takes place for the goods to qual­i­fy un­der the COO regime," Ex­porTT said.