The Caribbean Community (CARICOM) has sought to reassure Guyana’s honey farmers that their worries concerning the exportation of their goods are being addressed.
According to Dr Chantal Ononaiwu, Director of External Trade at CARICOM’s Secretariat’s Directorate of the Caribbean Single Market and Trade.
Ononaiwu was speaking at the “The Original Jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice and the Private Sector” breakfast lecture.
Guyanese honey producers say they are having significant difficulty exporting locally produced honey into the Caribbean due to rules in Trinidad and Tobago prohibiting trans-shipment.
Ononaiwu was responding to concerns expressed by Rafeek Khan, Vice Chairman of the Guyana Manufacturing and Services Association (GMSA), and GMSA Adviser Ramesh Dookhoo, who both emphasized the need for Trinidad and Tobago to repeal the 88-year-old Beekeeping and Bee Products Act’s prohibition on the transportation of honey.
Ononaiwu also acknowledged that honey had been a “longstanding issue on the agenda” of CARICOM’s Ministerial Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) and would remain so until it is resolved.
The island’s Food and Drug Act of 1960 and the Beekeeping and Bee Products Act of 1935 govern the island’s honey, bees, and bee products.
Furthermore, according to the country’s Beekeeping and Bee Products Act, only honey from the Windward and Leeward Islands can be transported to the twin-island republic.
The country initially limited the entry of honey from Grenada and other Caribbean countries due to fears about the American Foulbrood disease, which might be fatal to honeybees.
However, Grenada brought the matter before COTED in 2013, and the Council ruled that Trinidad’s refusal to grant market access violated the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas, CARICOM’s primary treaty.
The twin island republic was then ordered to abolish the ban on honey imports and transshipments.
