Gail Alexan­der

A crack­down is com­ing on the il­lic­it trade in­volv­ing coun­ter­feit brand­ing and where there’s sale of items in­clud­ing al­co­hol, to­bac­co and clean­ing agents.

Work on this area has al­so in­clud­ed re­search done and con­tin­u­ing, on sources of coun­ter­feit TT mon­ey.

This was re­vealed by Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon yes­ter­day in the Sen­ate re­ply­ing to UNC Sen­a­tor Wade Mark’s queries.

Mark not­ed re­ports of an il­lic­it trade in­volv­ing coun­ter­feit brand­ing which is neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ing T&T’s rev­enue stream and glob­al trade.

Gopee- Scoon said a sub­stan­tial amount of mon­ey has been lost to this sec­tor, but she didn’t have the fig­ure at hand.

She added that a few raids have been done to tack­le the prob­lem but much more has to be done.

Gopee-Scoon said, “Il­lic­it trade is a glob­al phe­nom­e­non and Gov­ern­ment is aware of the im­pact of such ac­tiv­i­ty which not on­ly re­sults in the loss of tax rev­enue, but al­so un­der­mines le­git­i­mate lo­cal busi­ness­es and ex­pos­es con­sumers to po­ten­tial health risks from sub-stan­dard prod­ucts.

As such, the Gov­ern­ment in re­cent­ly out­lined pol­i­cy has iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing broad mea­sures for ac­tion, to as­sist with com­bat­ing il­lic­it trade lo­cal­ly.”

Mea­sures com­prise

* Task­ing the re­spec­tive min­istries and bor­der agen­cies to take im­me­di­ate ac­tion to in­crease sur­veil­lance of re­tail op­er­a­tions to seize il­le­gal prod­ucts and re­strict the im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal com­modi­ties;

* Fa­cil­i­tat­ing con­sumer ed­u­ca­tion on the re­spon­si­ble con­sump­tion of prod­ucts;

* En­forc­ing ap­pro­pri­ate na­tion­al stan­dards for af­fect­ed prod­ucts.

Gopee-Scoon added, “Ac­cord­ing­ly, the Min­istry is spear­head­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to com­bat il­lic­it trade. The ap­proach en­tails de­vel­op­ing an ac­tion plan, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with key trade-re­lat­ed agen­cies and the pri­vate sec­tor.”

“ It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that this col­lab­o­ra­tive pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ship will de­vel­op rec­om­men­da­tions to ad­dress il­lic­it trade in T&T. The min­istry has al­ready be­gun con­sul­ta­tions and is re­ceiv­ing over­whelm­ing sup­port from the pri­vate sec­tor for the ini­tia­tive.”

She said it’s ex­pect­ed the mea­sures pro­posed will not on­ly ad­dress il­lic­it trade broad­ly, but al­so tar­get those prod­ucts which are most fre­quent­ly trad­ed by il­lic­it means in T&T such as to­bac­co, al­co­hol and clean­ing agents.

“ A com­pre­hen­sive ac­tion plan will be sub­mit­ted to Cab­i­net in the sec­ond quar­ter of the fis­cal year 2020/2021 and would be ac­com­pa­nied by a ro­bust con­sumer ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign.

Oth­er on­go­ing ini­tia­tives which will sup­port Gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to com­bat il­lic­it trade in­clude:

* In­tro­duc­tion of a new Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and Em­pow­er­ment Act which will treat with sale of coun­ter­feit goods. The leg­is­la­tion will fa­cil­i­tate co­op­er­a­tion amongst the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion, Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Con­troller of the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice for en­force­ment of these pro­vi­sions to ad­dress claims of coun­ter­feit goods brought by con­sumers;

* On­go­ing con­sumer aware­ness cam­paigns by the Con­sumer Af­fairs Di­vi­sion geared to­wards iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of coun­ter­feit prod­ucts and their as­so­ci­at­ed risks.

* Con­tin­ued im­ple­men­ta­tion of the World Trade Or­gan­i­sa­tion Agree­ment on Trade Fa­cil­i­ta­tion which will en­hance risk pro­fil­ing of car­go by the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion; and

* Pub­lic-pri­vate en­gage­ment by T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, in­clud­ing es­tab­lish­ment of an Il­lic­it Trade Task Force in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Po­lice Ser­vice, Cus­toms/ Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Con­troller of the In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice, to in­crease aware­ness and tack­le il­lic­it trade.