Rhon­dor Dowlat

A ship­ment of teak bound for In­dia was seized at the Port of Port-of-Spain on Tues­day morn­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia, Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers, car­ry­ing out an in­spec­tion of con­tain­ers for ex­port, dis­cov­ered the teak in its rough, un­dressed for­mat.

The ex­por­ta­tion of teak is not banned, how­ev­er, as ex­plained it must be prop­er­ly pre­pared as stat­ed by the State.

Of­fi­cials at the Forestry Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries were con­tact­ed about the seizure at about 4 pm on Tues­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture, Land and Fish­eries Clarence Ramb­harat said the prices for the lo­cal sale of teak by the State are fixed.

The sug­gest­ed prices for sale to oth­er users are al­so rec­om­mend­ed by the State.

“The pros­e­cu­tion of this mat­ter is han­dled by Cus­toms and we are not aware at this time of what Cus­toms is con­sid­er­ing. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing,” Ramb­harat said.

He fur­ther ex­plained that rough teak was banned from ex­port in 2014 un­der the new Teak and Pine Pol­i­cy be­cause it is a pre­cious re­source de­vel­oped over decades for lo­cal saw millers and down­stream users.

“It is sold at sub­sidised prices in or­der to sup­port lo­cal fur­ni­ture man­u­fac­tur­ers and oth­er lo­cal down­stream users,” he said.

The min­is­ter dis­closed that the is­sue of unau­tho­rised ex­port of teak has been de­tect­ed on two oc­ca­sions since the ban, “but this par­tic­u­lar mat­ter is point­ing to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pre­vi­ous ex­ports which were in breach of the ban. The mat­ter is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed ful­ly and the ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion will be tak­en.”

The State cur­rent­ly owns ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 hectares of teak and 4,500 hectares of Caribbean pine.