–Sattaur says
COMMISSIONER-General of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Khurshid Sattaur has said that since the commissioning of the container scanner more than two months ago, the US$1M device is working well and yielding results, despite attempts by some shippers to avoid the procedure. He said the logistical aspects of the operation of the scanner are going well, and that the risk profiling system is working as expected.
“All exports, especially timber, are scanned…But people who want to avoid the scanning are making up stories. But I think we are facilitating exports a lot,” the Commissioner-General said.
The piece of equipment came into the country one year ago, but electrical compatibility issues had plagued its installation. It is now fully installed and operational at the Guyana National Shipping Corporation (GNSC) container terminal, La Penitence.
The media was given a tour of the facility towards the end of May, at its launching and provided with an update as to the efforts the GRA was making to combat smuggling and illegal activity.
“As you have seen in today’s demonstration, it has been at work; it has been actually doing work that it was designed to do. This scanner, I would hope, would detect some of the illicit items that are going out through containers,” Sattaur had said at the time.
“We make a determination [from the customs declaration form] whether or not the container would be scanned…We make that determination, and the containers are scheduled to come here before they go to the [exporting] wharf. The others are told to go to the wharf; don’t come here,” he’d said.
He’d however made it clear that containers destined for the U.S. must be scanned without fail. “I think we have a very good risk management system,” he said, adding that it is impractical for the GRA to scan the nearly 1,000 containers that are exported from Guyana on a yearly basis.
It takes ten to 15 minutes to scan a container, and with the export volumes that Guyana now experiences, this throughput rate is more than adequate, Sattaur said.
The GRA acquired the container with funding from Millennium Challenge Account (MCA)/United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Government of Guyana.
The equipment will be utilised as a tool by the Law Enforcement and Investigation Division (LEID), in keeping with the GRA’s standardisation and modernisation programme. The GRA proposes to use the scanner primarily to process mainly containerised imports as part of enhancing revenue protection exercises.
But based on several factors, including international requirements where the United States of America has initiated the process of mandatory certification for all exports arriving at its ports, and the volume of illegal drugs/narcotics being found concealed in containers leaving Port Georgetown, GRA’s mandate authority was extended by Cabinet to include profiling and scanning of containerised exports.