PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Con­flict­ing in­for­ma­tion be­tween le­gal no­tices and in­ter­na­tion­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion codes led to last’s week’s sud­den re­clas­si­fi­ca­tion of the mild hy­brids.

This was the rev­e­la­tion which emerged fol­low­ing a third meet­ing this week be­tween the Trinidad and To­ba­go Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, the Min­istry of Fi­nance and Cus­toms of­fi­cials on yes­ter­day.

“Al­though it was con­tra­dic­to­ry, con­tra­dict­ing one an­oth­er, the le­gal no­tice and the code, the clas­si­fi­ca­tion code, we have to reach a mid­dle ground on this. So, this is what the min­is­ter has told us. Now, he has to reach a mid­dle ground and that every­body would be able to be a win­ner in this sit­u­a­tion,” said Bab­wah, out­side the Min­istry’s of­fice at the Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, the Twin Tow­ers in Port of Spain yes­ter­day.

Bab­wah, how­ev­er, was con­fi­dent that the Min­is­ter would act ur­gent­ly to ad­dress the is­sue, al­though he could not give a time­line for res­o­lu­tion.

“Be­cause it’s a le­gal no­tice and the min­is­ter can’t is­sue that on his own. He has to now go to Cab­i­net and they will have to ap­prove that. They will have dis­cus­sion and then they will have to is­sue that le­gal no­tice,” said Bab­wah,” adding: “So, again, the dis­cus­sion cen­tred around that, but he could not give a com­mit­ment, so to speak, a com­mit­ment as to what would hap­pen. But what he did in­di­cate was that it would be a win-win sit­u­a­tion for every­one.”

Last week sev­er­al mild hy­brids were re-clas­si­fied to ex­clude them from hy­brid tax con­ces­sions, lead­ing to sev­er­al pop­u­lar ve­hi­cles, such as the Toy­ota Hyrid­er and Taisor and the Suzu­ki Fronx, Grand Vi­tara, Swift, Er­ti­ga, and XL7 in­creas­ing in prices by tens of thou­sands of dol­lars

TTA­DA vice pres­i­dent Rhon­dall Fee­les al­so shared op­ti­mism that the right de­ci­sion would be made for deal­ers who had or­dered ve­hi­cles be­fore the sud­den ad­just­ment.

“The thing I’m very grate­ful for is that Cus­toms and the Min­istry un­der­stand,” said Fee­les, “I feel more con­fi­dent af­ter the meet­ing to­day that some­thing is go­ing to be done when it comes to those per­sons who have or­dered their ve­hi­cles and ve­hi­cles are ready on the port.”

Like Bab­wah, Fee­les felt the Min­istry had giv­en the deal­ers a lev­el of as­sur­ance due to the will­ing­ness to ur­gent­ly meet and dis­cuss the sit­u­a­tion.

“We can’t pre­empt ex­act­ly what is go­ing to take place, but we could guar­an­tee that we all left that meet­ing in agree­ment that there was some lev­el of con­tra­dic­tion be­tween the le­gal no­tice, which would have guid­ed im­porters, and the now re­as­sign­ment, which was done by the World Cus­toms Or­ga­ni­za­tion. And that is a very big win in our favour, I would say, that we’re stand­ing on sim­i­lar grounds with Cus­toms and the Min­istry when it comes to that.”