GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of an in­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to for­mer man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of the West In­di­an To­bac­co Com­pa­ny Ltd (Wit­co), Raoul Glynn, the com­pa­ny re­mains fo­cused on its fu­ture.

This was re­vealed by Wit­co's chair In­grid Lash­ley, who told mem­bers of the me­dia, "Suf­fice it to say the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was com­plete. We part­ed ways am­i­ca­bly and we are now on to our fu­ture in re­spect of how we pro­ceed go­ing for­ward."

Lash­ley was re­spond­ing to ques­tions be­fore a tour of the com­pa­ny's fa­cil­i­ties at Champs Fleurs yes­ter­day.

The rea­sons for Glynn’s de­par­ture from Wit­co have not been made pub­lic to date.

Glynn was ap­point­ed as Wit­co's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor in Oc­to­ber 2022, af­ter work­ing for more than 21 years with­in the British Amer­i­can To­bac­co (BAT) group. Be­fore his ap­point­ment at Wit­co, Glynn served in sev­er­al se­nior roles with­in the BAT group, in­clud­ing as the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Car­reras Ltd in Ja­maica. BAT is the ma­jor­i­ty share­hold­er of Wit­co, with 50.13 per cent of the com­pa­ny as at Feb­ru­ary 13 2024.

In De­cem­ber last year Hi­ram Muril­lo was con­firmed as Wit­co's man­ag­ing di­rec­tor.

Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon who was al­so present said while the cig­a­rette man­u­fac­tur­er con­tin­ues to be in the top ten of ex­ports in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, il­lic­it trade con­tin­ues to be se­ri­ous prob­lem.

She said the An­ti-Il­lic­it Trade Task Force (AIT­TF) made about six seizures last year which not on­ly com­prised cig­a­rettes but al­so oth­er il­le­gal goods.

"There were about six or sev­en seizures. It would not have been in the pub­lic do­main and there are some is­sues we have had to iron out fur­ther...when you do seize that amount of cig­a­rettes, where do you put them af­ter that per­son ought to be charged.

"...We are en­sur­ing that the il­le­git­i­mate prod­ucts are, in fact, struck off the mar­ket and we will con­tin­ue to do our work with the com­mit­tee in that re­gard," she added.

Mean­while, Roger Roach, Pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) who ad­dressed the is­sue of for­eign ex­change, said there are still chal­lenges be­cause some mem­bers are not up to the net forex earn­er thresh­old.

"So we still have mem­bers look­ing around for for­eign ex­change, but it's a lit­tle eas­i­er for man­u­fac­tur­ers be­cause the per­sons who have the biggest is­sue with for­eign ex­change are those com­pa­nies who buy all their prod­ucts abroad and on­ly sell the prod­ucts for TT dol­lars.

"Those kinds of busi­ness­es have the biggest ob­sta­cle with re­gards to for­eign ex­change earn­ings. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are not in that po­si­tion," he added.

How­ev­er, he not­ed that there are some man­u­fac­tur­ers that do not ex­port.