> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # CARICOM Gives a Business Three Ways to Raise a Trade Barrier. Suriname Used One Twelve Times and Still Needed a Court. - URL: https://www.lacaribenanews.com/caricom-gives-a-business-three-ways-to-raise-a-trade-barrier-suriname-used-one-twelve-times-and-still-needed-a-court/ - Published: 2026-08-17T14:40:19.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-17T14:40:28.000Z - Author: Theon Alleyne *By Theon Alleyne, CRCP, CCEP. Beat: compliance, regulation and business environment.* *Published 17 August 2026\.* *To raise a trade barrier CARICOM offers three routes. Two handle tariffs on imports, not barriers on exports. The third is Article 222, and companies brought 35 of the court’s first 37 cases.* A business that wants to raise a trade barrier in CARICOM has three routes. It can petition its own government to apply to COTED for a tariff change, which Guyana’s Revenue Authority tells manufacturers to do and which works. It can go through the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation, which holds observer status at Community organs by memorandum. Or it can sue a member state at the Caribbean Court of Justice under Article 222 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas. The first two are built for tariffs on goods a firm imports, not barriers on goods it exports. Suriname took one Guyanese measure to COTED on twelve separate occasions between 2001 and 2012 without securing compliance. The companies affected recovered US$6,047,244.47 only after going to court in 2014. *Part two of two.* [*Part one sets out the two chamber agreements signed in 2026 and the barriers they name.*](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/PART-ONE-SLUG/) **Is there really no way to raise a trade barrier?** There are three ways. The problem is not absence. It is fit. Two of the three are administrative, they are documented, and they work. Both were built to give a firm relief from a tariff on something it wants to import from outside the region. Neither was built for a firm whose shipment is turned back at a port inside it. The third is a court. It works too, and it is the only one where the firm appears in its own name. **How does a business get a tariff changed?** By asking its own government to ask COTED. Guyana’s Revenue Authority states the route plainly: manufacturers should approach the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a COTED suspension. The Foreign Trade Department there processes applications for suspensions of the Common External Tariff under the Revised Treaty. It is one of eleven functions the department lists. The treaty text explains why the government has to do the asking. Amended Article 83(2) begins “A Member State may apply to COTED.” The applicant of record is the state. A company is the reason for the application, not a party to it. Article 83(2) also sets out what the application has to establish. That the product is not being produced in the Community, or that the quantity produced does not satisfy Community demand, or that the quality is below the Community standard. Article 83(3) lets the Secretary-General grant a suspension between COTED meetings and report it to the next one, which is why CARICOM publishes periodic reports on suspensions granted under that power. There is one place in the whole Treaty where a manufacturer starts the clock itself. Article 84 gives a producer a route with fixed timetables measured in seven and fourteen days. It concerns extra-regional inputs. Read the three grounds in Article 83(2) again and the shape of the machinery is clear. Every one of them is about something a firm wants to bring in. None of them is about something a firm cannot get out. The machinery is not idle. In June 2025 the 60th COTED altered the Common External Tariff on paints and varnishes to 35 per cent, taking effect on 1 July 2026, after technical work coordinated by the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation on behalf of manufacturers in Saint Lucia, Grenada, Suriname and Jamaica. [A single formal objection from Georgetown later reopened that decision](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/caricom-paint-tariff-suspended-guyana/), which tells you the process has real force in both directions. Roughly twelve months from press record to legal effect, for a tariff line, with a producer group behind it. That is the benchmark the region can actually hit when the instrument fits the problem. **What is the CPSO and can a small firm use it?** It is the second route, and it is more open to a small Guyanese exporter than most of them realise. The CARICOM Private Sector Organisation was incorporated on 2 June 2020 and designated an Associate Institution of the Community by Heads of Government on 29 October 2020\. A memorandum with CARICOM signed on 3 December 2020 granted it observer status at meetings of the Community’s organs and bodies on matters related to the Single Market and Economy, and placed it on five named committees, including the Sub-Committee on the Food Security Plan and the CET and Rules of Origin Sub-Committee. It has attended and participated in COTED since the 51st meeting in November 2020\. Heads of Government have received its reports and commissioned studies from it. Membership is open to individual companies, not only to chambers. Category III covers small firms and micro-enterprises, on three tests: substantially owned and effectively controlled by CARICOM nationals, in existence three years or more, and properly registered in a member state. The Georgetown Chamber joined on 1 July 2022, so a Guyanese firm can also reach it that way. Now the part a business needs to know before relying on any of that. The access is a contract, not a right. Article 22 of the Revised Treaty recognises Associate Institutions and confers nothing else. Article 27 gives the vote to member states only. Article 26, which establishes the Community’s consultation system, does not mention the private sector at all, and no article designates the CPSO or any other body as its representative. Observer status exists because CARICOM and the CPSO signed a memorandum, and the text of that memorandum is not public. There is no published way to file anything. No barrier report form, no case procedure, no acknowledgement standard, no timeline. The published channel is a contact form and a general email address. The organisation lists the elimination of non-tariff barriers among the benefits of membership without attaching a mechanism to it. There is also no published fee. As of August 2026 the revenue thresholds on the membership categories page still read “USDXXX”. On 6 July 2026, at a dialogue in Saint Lucia held in the margins of the 51st Heads of Government meeting, Heads and the private sector adopted a pairwise model of direct engagement between the member states imposing fifty-seven non-tariff barriers identified by the private sector and the member states those barriers affect, with time-bound remedial actions. The fifty-seven are not itemised in any public document. No product, no member state, no schedule. A Guyanese beekeeper cannot find out whether honey is on that list. And the organisation does not speak for Guyanese business without argument. In January 2022, after the CPSO said Guyana’s local content law appeared to violate the Treaty, the Private Sector Commission of Guyana questioned its legitimacy and said it did not represent the local private sector. The Guyana Oil and Gas Energy Chamber asked CARICOM to suspend its recognition. In June 2022 the Commission said it condemned “in the harshest possible tone, the gross and egregious exhibition of disrespect for the local private sector.” Nine of the twenty-three Council seats belong to large firms and two each to the small, medium and institutional categories. **What happened the last time a state did take a barrier to COTED?** It went on for eleven years. Guyana levied an environmental tax of GY$10 per unit on imported non-returnable beverage containers. Suriname objected. In the words of the Caribbean Court of Justice, “at the insistence of the Surinamese government the matter engaged the attention of COTED on twelve separate occasions.” The record inside those meetings is not one of inattention. At the 11th COTED in May 2001 the finding was that Guyana had to make the necessary legislative amendments. At the 14th in February 2003, no action had been taken. At the 19th in May 2005 the Community’s General Counsel advised that the levy violated Article 90 of the Treaty. At the 33rd in November 2011 Guyana was mandated to immediately remove the discriminatory elements. At the 34th in March 2012 it was urged to act with all deliberate speed. Eleven years. Twelve meetings. A legal opinion from the Community’s own counsel. A ministerial mandate. The tax was still being collected. Rudisa Beverages, a Surinamese company, and Caribbean International Distributors, which the judgment describes as a Guyanese company, applied for special leave in December 2012\. Guyana indicated no objection in March 2013\. Leave was granted in June 2013\. On 8 May 2014 the Court ordered the tax stopped forthwith and ordered Guyana to repay US$6,047,244.47 plus further sums, interest at four per cent and costs. That is the honest answer to whether COTED is a route. It is a route. It heard this complaint twelve times and it took a court to end it. **Can a company take a government to court?** Yes, and companies are almost the only ones who do. Article 222 of the Revised Treaty gives standing to “persons, natural or juridical, of a Contracting Party” to appear as parties before the Caribbean Court of Justice with special leave. Article 211(1)(d) makes that jurisdiction compulsory and exclusive. Justice Winston Anderson of the Court put the scale of it to the Barbados Chamber of Commerce on 17 October 2023:“Of the 37 cases heard by the Court to date, 35 have been brought by individuals pursuant to Article 222.” Four conditions apply. The Treaty must have intended the right to benefit you directly. You must have been prejudiced. Your own government must have declined to take the claim up, or agreed you may take it instead. And the Court must find the interest of justice requires it. The third does not apply when a company sues its own state. At the leave stage the Court applies an arguability standard, not proof. Others have used it. Hummingbird Rice Mills took Suriname to the Court over its failure to apply the tariff on extra-regional flour. Rock Hard Distribution, a Saint Lucian company, took Trinidad and Tobago over cement classification. Mootilal Ramhit, a Trinidadian contractor, obtained a declaration that Trinidad “failed to verify that the Claimant had been consulted” before a tariff suspension was approved, which is a procedural right worth more to a small supplier than it sounds. Two warnings before anyone gets excited. Hummingbird won its point and recovered nothing. The Court found the breach, refused damages for want of evidence of loss, and awarded half its costs. A claim without a quantified, documented loss produces a declaration and a legal bill. And there is a clock. In SM Jaleel the Court applied a five-year limitation period running from the point the claimant knew or reasonably should have known the state was in breach. That is why the refund there ran from 7 March 2011 to 7 August 2015 and no further back. A grievance a sector has nursed for twenty years is not a stronger claim for the waiting. **Was any of this ever notified?** Unknown, and that is the finding. Article 226(1) permits a member state to take measures to protect human, animal or plant life or health, provided they are not “arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between Member States where like conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on trade.” Article 226(2) requires that “measures taken by the Member States pursuant to paragraph 1 shall be notified to COTED.” CARICOM publishes no register of those notifications. No index, no annex, no searchable list. Whether Trinidad notified COTED of the honey prohibition, the pineapple crown rule, the pepper stems, the eddoes treatment or the poultry ban cannot be established from public sources in either direction. CARICOM also publishes no communiqué for any regular COTED meeting between 2018 and 2026\. What is published for those meetings is a press release and the Secretary-General’s opening remarks. The 62nd COTED, held in Georgetown on 11 and 12 June 2026, was reported as covering CSME assessment, digital trade policy and the multilateral trading system. Non-tariff barriers do not appear. Nor could any WTO sanitary or phytosanitary notification by Trinidad covering honey, bee products, pineapple, peppers, eddoes, taro or poultry be found. Trinidad has never notified its SPS enquiry point or national notification authority under Annex B of the SPS Agreement. It has notified other things. In October 2023 it notified the WTO of an export prohibition on copper waste and scrap, expressly invoking the exception for measures necessary to protect human, animal or plant life or health. It knows how to notify a prohibition. None of that proves a failure to notify, because the notification record is not public. What can be said is narrower and worse. If the notifications were made, nobody outside government has any lawful way of finding out. **What can a Guyanese firm do this quarter?** Five things, none of which depends on either chamber agreement producing anything. Write it down before you do anything else. If a container comes back, keep the notice, the instrument cited, the date and the value. Hummingbird is the reason. Every route above, from a ministry petition to a court claim, converts a quantified documented loss into leverage and converts an anecdote into nothing. Demerara Distillers had two containers of packaged milk worth about US$100,000 turned back in 2024 and four containers of flavoured water detained. That case is still cited today because the company said so publicly and specifically. Take it to the Foreign Trade Department anyway. It is the office that carries Guyanese applications to COTED, and it is also the office that would decide whether to espouse a claim on your behalf. Article 222 turns on your government having declined or agreed. Nothing starts that clock except asking. Join something that has a seat. The CPSO takes small firms directly under Category III and the Georgetown Chamber has been a member since 2022\. The [Georgetown Chamber’s own complaint intake](https://gcci.gy/file-a-complaint/?ref=lacaribenanews.com) says it will escalate to the relevant authorities, and it is open to members. Ask specifically whether your case goes to the joint desk agreed with the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber on 8 July, and ask whether your product is one of the fifty-seven. Get the alerts before the rule lands. ePing, run by the WTO with the International Trade Centre and UN DESA, carries sanitary, phytosanitary and technical barrier notifications and is free. Set Trinidad and Tobago as a market of interest, add your HS codes, and you get email on proposed measures with a minimum sixty-day comment window. Both countries are registered. Its limit is real: it carries only what a government chooses to notify, which is why nothing on honey appears in it. Ask the enquiry point whether the rule is lawful. Guyana’s technical barriers enquiry point sits at the Guyana National Bureau of Standards and its published function includes forwarding your comments on a foreign measure to the regulator that made it. Trinidad’s counterpart at its Bureau of Standards takes enquiries from the private sector directly, and Trinidad’s own export agency describes that office as providing “analysis to determine if a requirement is a Non-Tariff barrier or a legitimate Technical Regulation.” A Guyanese exporter can write to Trinidad’s standards body and ask it, in writing, which of the two it is. Very few do. Formalising costs money, and a firm that cannot show registered employees and remitted deductions clears none of these gates. Kathy Smith made the point on 19 July 2026:“They want to see your employees being registered at the GRA level. They’re being registered at the NIS level, and you are remitting that money to both organizations.” [The Guyana Development Bank’s zero-interest facility for small firms](https://www.lacaribenanews.com/timothy-tuckers-guyana-development-bank-playbook-for-msmes/) is the cheapest capital available for that groundwork. **Frequently asked questions** **How does a business raise a trade barrier in CARICOM?** Three ways. Petition your own government to apply to COTED, which is how tariff suspensions are done and which works. Go through the CARICOM Private Sector Organisation, which holds observer status at Community organs. Or sue the member state at the Caribbean Court of Justice under Article 222\. Only the third puts the firm’s own name on the claim. **Can a company apply to COTED directly?** No. Amended Article 83(2) reads “A Member State may apply to COTED.” Guyana’s Revenue Authority directs manufacturers to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, whose Foreign Trade Department processes the application. Article 84 is the only Treaty provision where a manufacturer starts the clock, and it concerns extra-regional inputs. **Can a small Guyanese firm join the CPSO?** Yes, under Category III, if it is substantially owned and effectively controlled by CARICOM nationals, has existed three years or more and is properly registered in a member state. No fee schedule is published, and no barrier-reporting form or procedure exists. The Georgetown Chamber has been a member since 1 July 2022. **Does taking a barrier to COTED work?** The record is mixed at best. Suriname raised Guyana’s environmental levy at COTED on twelve separate occasions between 2001 and 2012, obtained a legal opinion from the Community’s General Counsel in 2005 and a ministerial mandate in 2011, and the tax was still being collected. It ended in 2014 when two companies won at the Caribbean Court of Justice. **How long does a company have to bring an Article 222 claim?** Five years, running from the point the claimant knew or reasonably should have known that the state was in breach. The Court applied this in SM Jaleel, which is why the refund there ran from 7 March 2011 to 7 August 2015 rather than the full period. **What happens if a company wins but cannot prove its losses?** It gets a declaration and a legal bill. In Hummingbird Rice Mills the Court found the breach, refused damages for want of evidence of loss, and awarded the claimant only half its costs. **Has Trinidad notified its measures on Guyanese produce to COTED?** Unknown. Article 226(2) requires notification of health-protection measures to COTED, but CARICOM publishes no register of them. No WTO sanitary or phytosanitary notification by Trinidad covering honey, pineapple, peppers, eddoes or poultry could be found.