Ccj Caribbean Jurisdiction

Jurisdiction

In order to further analysis the CCJs impact on the Caribbean one must look at its jurisdiction and how it has impacted its cases. Jurisdiction refers to a court's authority to hear a case. This broken down into the original jurisdiction of a court is the power to hear a case for the first time, as opposed to appellate jurisdiction, when a court has the power to review a lower court's decision. The impact of the CCJ’s jurisdiction is shown in RUDISA BEVERAGES & JUICES N.V. CARIBBEAN INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTORS INC CLAIMANTS and THE STATE OF GUYANA DEFENDANT.

Rudisa, a group of corporations originating in Suriname, produces and sells beverages in non-returnable containers. Caribbean International Distributors Inc. (CIDI), a locally owned subsidiary of Rudisa, imports and sells them in Guyana.

They alleged that the imposition by Guyana in 1995, by section 7A of the Customs Act, of an environmental levy or tax of $10 on all imported non-returnable beverage containers imported into Guyana, was discriminatory and amounted to a violation of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) passed into Guyana law in 2006. Article 87 of the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas (RTC) states that “member States shall not impose import duties on goods of Community origin.”

In the case of Rudisa v. The State of Guyana, the government of Guyana breached the RTC by implementing the environmental tax in the Customs Act. The issue of environmental tax was discussed with the Council on Economic Trade and Development (COTED) by the government of Suriname in 2001-2012 during a series of meetings and it was concluded that the tax was a breach of the RTC. After these meeting the government of Guyana sought to amend the Customs Act but the proposal for amendment was rejected by the National Assembly. Seeing that there were so many meetings with the Council on Trade and Development, the Government of Guyana was aware of the violation of the RTC for a good while and hence should have...