Almost 100 fuel import licences issued by GEA

It appears that a fuel vessel that has been held by authorities over the weekend was not recorded when it passed the city’s Boat House area. In fact, it was only after it was boarded by officials from Customs and the Guyana Energy Agency (GEA) that attempts were made to do so. The disclosures were made yesterday by Commissioner-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA), Godfrey Statia, during a Press Conference at his Camp Street office. The vessel, Jubilee, is said to be linked to a prominent businessman and a member of the legal fraternity. On the vessel, authorities found over 200,000 gallons of fuel that had not been declared. The taxes, if that vessel had gone scot-free, would have seen the state losing in excess of $36M in taxes. The boat is currently anchored in the Demerara River, under guard. According to Statia, in addition to the taxes due, GRA is not above slapping the captain with a hefty fine. Last year, it fined a captain $20M for a similar incident with a fuel smuggling boat. With up to 50 percent tax on imported fuel, smuggling has been a major illegal business with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes lost every year by the government. With regard to last week’s incident, GEA officials reportedly spotted the fuel boat in the Demerara River around Thursday but there seemed to have been no indications that it reported to the Boat House, located at Stabroek Market area. Officials of Customs and the Maritime Administration are stationed there. They are supposed to record the entries. Customs is supposed to check if there are items to be declared. On the boat, that the fuel was found, the officials who boarded it were reportedly told that the vessel had fuel for Suriname but that the captain was not around to verify this. According to Statia, it was clear that there were “shortcomings” at the Boat House area and GRA is attempting to fix these weaknesses now.

(Kaieteurnews)