Notwithstanding the progress that has been made to tackle smuggling over the years, vehicle smuggling remains a challenge that the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is doing its utmost to confront.
On Monday, GRA Commissioner General, Godfrey Statia, appeared before the Parliamentary Public Account Committee (PAC) and was asked about illegal vehicles in Guyana.
The Auditor General Report of 2019 had listed as much as 195 vehicle seizures for that year.
Illegal vehicles entering Guyana continue to be a problem, according to the Commissioner General.
“We continually work to lessen [vehicle smuggling] but, for instance, it was just two to three weeks ago, we found a vehicle that was smuggled through Lethem, with Brazilian number plates, in Georgetown with a Guyanese number plate. And we found that that also happens from Suriname. All we can do is keep a record of all the vehicles that are in Guyana based on whether they come through the borders,” Statia explained.
The GRA Boss noted went onto identify the Lethem border as a major challenge for the agency. He noted that once vehicles do not use legal border crossings, they become harder to track.
“There are lots of ATVs (All-Terrian Vehicles) in Lethem that never even made a legal border crossing because of the porosity of the border at Lethem. So, as long as they passed through the bridge and the Customs, we have a record of them but if they do not pass through there, we do not have a record of them at all,” he stressed.
There are some instances, Statia noted, where vehicles come into Guyana with legal number plates, but they may have been stolen in Brazil.
Even when this happens, however, Statia explained that the GRA is sometimes able to identify these vehicles.
“We hold them up here eventually because we recognised, based on the type of vehicle, that it could not have had that particular hold number plate,” the Commissioner General stated.
