Shas­tri Boodan

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA) is urg­ing so­cial me­dia com­men­ta­tors to re­frain from in­ter­fer­ing in mat­ters af­fect­ing the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try, say­ing be­hind-the-scenes ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Gov­ern­ment se­cured tax ex­emp­tions for a range of mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles.

TTA­DA pres­i­dent Visham Bab­wah said the as­so­ci­a­tion suc­cess­ful­ly lob­bied Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to re­store tax ex­emp­tions for ve­hi­cles that had be­come sub­ject to du­ties fol­low­ing a change in their clas­si­fi­ca­tion un­der the World Cus­toms Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s Har­mo­nized Sys­tem (HS) code.

Speak­ing af­ter the con­ces­sion was an­nounced, Bab­wah said the ex­emp­tion re­sult­ed from sev­er­al days of tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sions and should not be at­trib­uted to crit­i­cism on so­cial me­dia.

“We met with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance on Thurs­day and that same night the full ex­emp­tion was an­nounced in a press re­lease,” Bab­wah said.

“The Gov­ern­ment ex­er­cised its right to ex­empt these ve­hi­cles from tax­es even though they fell un­der the World Cus­toms Or­ga­ni­za­tion’s clas­si­fi­ca­tion.”

The con­ces­sion ap­plies to mild hy­brid ve­hi­cles, in­clud­ing sev­er­al Toy­ota, Suzu­ki, Mer­cedes-Benz, Au­di and Kia mod­els that were pre­vi­ous­ly ex­pect­ed to at­tract cus­toms du­ty, mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax and VAT.

Bab­wah said TTA­DA mem­bers were “ex­treme­ly hap­py” with the out­come, not­ing that the as­so­ci­a­tion had worked tire­less­ly to present the tech­ni­cal ev­i­dence need­ed to jus­ti­fy the ex­emp­tion.

He crit­i­cised so­cial me­dia com­men­ta­tors who, he said, rushed to con­demn the Gov­ern­ment and Cus­toms with­out un­der­stand­ing the com­plex­i­ties of in­ter­na­tion­al cus­toms clas­si­fi­ca­tions.

“A lot of peo­ple on so­cial me­dia who are not mem­bers of TTA­DA went about the process the wrong way,” Bab­wah said. “They were blam­ing the Gov­ern­ment and con­demn­ing Cus­toms with­out un­der­stand­ing that there are in­ter­na­tion­al rules and tech­ni­cal re­quire­ments that have to be fol­lowed.”

He said Cus­toms of­fi­cials had le­git­i­mate rea­sons for en­forc­ing the orig­i­nal clas­si­fi­ca­tion and that the as­so­ci­a­tion de­lib­er­ate­ly avoid­ed mak­ing pub­lic state­ments un­til it had en­gaged the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties.

“Peo­ple should get the facts be­fore they go on so­cial me­dia,” Bab­wah said. “There are tech­ni­cal is­sues they sim­ply don’t un­der­stand. It is easy to com­ment on­line, but they don’t have the ne­go­ti­a­tion skills or the tech­ni­cal knowl­edge re­quired to re­solve these mat­ters.”

Bab­wah said some of the on­line com­men­tary com­pli­cat­ed TTA­DA’s ne­go­ti­a­tions be­cause Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials mis­tak­en­ly be­lieved those mak­ing the state­ments were speak­ing on be­half of the as­so­ci­a­tion.

“When we went in­to the meet­ings, we first had to make it clear that these peo­ple were not mem­bers of TTA­DA,” he said. “Those kinds of com­ments can make things worse for the as­so­ci­a­tion and for the in­dus­try.”

He said Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo recog­nised TTA­DA as the of­fi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive body for the au­to­mo­tive sec­tor and dealt di­rect­ly with the as­so­ci­a­tion through­out the dis­cus­sions.

“The min­is­ter can­not ne­go­ti­ate with in­di­vid­u­als. He has to deal with an au­tho­rised body, and TTA­DA is the body that rep­re­sents the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try,” Bab­wah said.

He thanked Tan­coo and Cus­toms of­fi­cials for re­spond­ing quick­ly to the as­so­ci­a­tion’s con­cerns, ex­plain­ing that the ex­emp­tion was achieved on­ly af­ter sev­er­al meet­ings and the sub­mis­sion of de­tailed tech­ni­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion.

“It wasn’t just one meet­ing,” Bab­wah said. “From last Fri­day un­til Thurs­day, we held sev­er­al meet­ings with Cus­toms and the Min­is­ter. We had to pro­vide tech­ni­cal lit­er­a­ture ex­plain­ing how these ve­hi­cles op­er­ate and demon­strate that they met the re­quire­ments for tax ex­emp­tion. The ex­ec­u­tive worked late in­to the night gath­er­ing the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion be­fore Cus­toms was sat­is­fied and ap­proved the ex­emp­tion.”

Bab­wah said the out­come demon­strat­ed the val­ue of in­formed di­a­logue and tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise over pub­lic crit­i­cism, adding that TTA­DA would con­tin­ue work­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to ad­dress is­sues af­fect­ing the au­to­mo­tive in­dus­try.