GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Trinidad and Tobago High Commissioner to Guyana, Conrad Enill says that his country’s Parliament will at its next sitting debate legislation that restricts the importation of honey into the country.
(File Photo)Guyana has long lobbied for the removal of barriers to enable its honey to pass through Trinidad and Tobago’s ports and move to other Caribbean countries.
Trinidad and Tobago’s honey, bees and bee products are guided by the country’s Food and Drug Act of 1960 and Beekeeping and Bee products Act of 1935. Only honey originating from the Windward and Leeward Islands can be transshipped there.
“The honey issue has been one that has been difficult to deal with for a number of reasons but quite recently the Trinidad and Tobago government through its Cabinet approved what was required and it is now before the Parliament for legislative change,” Enill told the online publication NEWSROOM on Wednesday.
“Once that is in place, I believe that that will no longer be an issue,” Enill said following a meeting between Trinidad and Guyana manufacturers.
He said that the issue will most likely come before the Parliament following the debate on the national budget that starts on Friday.
Enill is quoted as saying that Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has committed to amend or repeal the law that blocks transshipment for the benefit of the Caribbean Community.
Trinidad initially restricted the importation of honey from Grenada and other Caribbean countries over concerns of a potentially disastrous disease of honeybees, the American Foulbrood disease.
Grenada took the issue to Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) in 2013 and the Council decided that Trinidad’s denial of market access was in violation of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, which governs the regional integration movement, CARICOM.
In June, the Director of External Trade at CARICOM’s Secretariat’s Directorate of the Caribbean Single Market and Trade, Dr Chantal Ononaiwu, sought to assure the producers of honey in Guyana that their concerns about the exportation of their products are not being ignored.
Ononaiwu said that honey has been a “longstanding issue on the agenda” of COTED that would remain there until it’s resolved. “
