International road transport agreement
Trade imbalance between Guyana and Brazil will be corrected
-Brazilian ambassador
Stabroek News
February 16, 2003
The international road transport agreement signed between Guyana and Brazil will correct what has been seen as a trade imbalance between Brazil and Guyana, Brazilian Ambassador to Guyana Ney Do Prado Dieguez said.
It also meant, he said, the resumption of work on the Takutu bridge by the end of next month and hopefully, its completion by year end. This would give a boost to the travel and tourism industry in Guyana and the Caribbean, while Brazil would benefit through trade with the Caribbean and the United States.
While Brazilians have been exporting products from Brazil through Bom Fin and across the border to Lethem and on to Georgetown through the Georgetown/ Lethem road without clearing customs and paying duties, Dieguez noted that Guyanese businessmen could not do the same. He recalled an incident in which the goods of some Guyanese businessmen had been seized in Manaus because duties had not been paid on the products. They were later released following intervention by the Guyana government.
Because the existing situation was deemed unfair to the Guyana government, Dieguez said the Brazilian government decided to implement `An Exceptional Regime' by which these products were cleared by customs in Boa Vista and then taken to the Guyana/Brazil border. On the border the mode of transportation changed to allow for trade in Guyana. The trade in Guyana is mainly in electrical appliances and foodstuffs.
He said the reverse situation was not possible because there is no law by which Brazil could import goods or products from Guyana since there was no customs administration to clear these pro-ducts at the borders. The agreement, he said, would correct this unfair situation.
In relation to tourism, he said that tourist travel would increase both ways especially by car, which is cheaper than air travel. Describing the Brazilians as a "restless people always looking for new places to travel," he expected an increase in the number of Brazilian travellers coming to Guyana. If the queues at the Brazilian/Venezuelan border with Brazilians going down to Margarita was any indication, he expected the same thing to happen in the case of Guyana, which would give access via the road to the Caribbean.
Noting that the road transport agreement was the institutional framework paving the way for action to be taken by Guyana and Brazil to put in place mechanisms - such as insurance and customs administration at the borders - to facilitate travel, he said that the agreement would still have to be ratified by the Brazilian Congress.
He anticipated that the ratification would take place in another two to three months, pointing out that Brazil had a new Congress. However, he added, the senators and members of parliament of the States of Roraima and Amazonas were very interested in the agreement and wanted it to go through as soon as possible.
For Brazil, he said that the agreement meant integration with Guyana. "It means that from now on, there is a possibility that we could send cargo to Guyana as well as use ports in Guyana to reach the Caribbean and the United States."
He went on, "it means we could have a connection by land from Boa Vista to Matapa through Georgetown, Paramaribo and Cayenne." Having a land connection between two states of Brazil through the Guianas was important for Brazil, he said. He also felt this would be beneficial for the Guianas themselves.
At present, he said that there were two companies - one Guyanese and one Brazilian - which were interested in establishing a transportation service using buses for passengers.
Asked about the Takutu bridge, Dieguez said that based on a meeting he had with the Governor of Roraima last week, he understood that there was one last requirement, the remeasurement of the bridge that had to be undertaken by the auditing court. He said that a company had already been chosen to do the remeasurement and after that the contract for "a new executive project of the bridge" would be executed.
Due to irregularities found during the start-up construction phase, the project was immediately interrupted. Until the irregularities were sorted out the work would then continue.
The ambassador said that based on the work that had been done by the auditing court and that which was left to be completed, he anticipated that the construction work on the bridge would be resumed by the end of next month and the bridge completed by the year end.
Asked about illegal travel, Dieguez replied that for Brazil and Guyana's indigenous peoples there were no borders as many "don't know where Brazil ends and where Guyana begins." (Miranda La Rose)
