Dear Editor,
I refer to your “Eyewitness” column of July 12 and July 13, wherein the writer mentions the sudden takeover countrywide of the grocery and supermarket business by Chinese nationals, displacing Guyanese.
The ‘Eyewitness’ equates this Chinese displacement of Guyanese with the scenario post Emancipation, when Madeiran indentured servants displaced the Black and Coloured shopkeepers who had arisen after Emancipation.
He also questions whether the Chinese takeover is a normal business process, or a sinister movement of defrauding various Governmental agencies through organized criminal activities such as gold and currency smuggling and drug dealing.
Suspicion of this linkage with criminal activity is strengthened by the recent police arrest of three members of a Chinese gang engaged in gold and currency smuggling; and secondly, in defiance of normal business principles, the establishment of two or even three similar supermarkets in the same street!
Guyanese shopkeepers and businessmen are willing to take on any Chinese competition, but such competition must be on a level playing field, and not skewed in favour of the Chinese.
Accordingly, the State has to intervene to re-establish a level playing field; restore a fair and inviting business milieu; and check the leakages of revenue, some of which are identified below:
(1) Payment of Customs and Excise duties by these individual businesses must be ascertained. This would avoid them robbing the revenue by various stratagems.
(2) Payment of Income Taxes must be ascertained, and this would include the examination of Accounts by GRA.
(3) It is well known that these businesses do not contribute to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS). The officers who are responsible for such collections should be carefully supervised to do their duty.
(4) These stores/supermarkets do not usually issue bills (receipts) for purchases, and this results in several abuses, such as the customer not being able to return defective goods, and the evasion of VAT and Income Tax payments.
(5) The selling of expired goods, especially in the country shops. This must be stamped out.
(6) Some of the goods they sell have directions and other information written in Chinese only, and that is in contravention of the law which requires an English version of these directions.
The Authorities, e.g. Food and Drugs Department, must stamp out this dangerous practice; since, for instance, a purchaser may ingest more than the safe dosage of a dangerous drug.
(7) Authorities responsible for the registration of businesses must ensure these businesses are properly and carefully registered, and the owners are clearly identifiable. This would prevent a number of abuses, such as “ownership” being changed without knowledge of the Authorities; Income Tax evasion, and other illegalities.
The State must address this important matter with immediacy, and we hope the Eyewitness would continue his research.
Yours sincerely
Concerned Business Associates