Geisha Kow­lessar

Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion De­vant Ma­haraj is deny­ing that Gov­ern­ment's re­moval of the 15 per cent Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) on cer­tain food items is a tem­po­rary mea­sure. Ma­haraj yes­ter­day said he had no knowl­edge that the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to re­turn the VAT on those com­modi­ties. "To say we would be tak­ing away VAT, then putting it back is to­tal­ly er­ro­neous and mis­lead­ing," he com­ment­ed.

It was Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai who said in his bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day that the VAT re­moval was a tem­po­rary mea­sure. "The in­creased lev­els of in­fla­tion stem­ming from our in­creas­ing­ly im­port­ed food re­quire­ments have had a harm­ful im­pact on our cit­i­zens," said Howai, "par­tic­u­lar­ly our most vul­ner­a­ble, as they sought to man­age the busi­ness of their every­day lives.

"Con­se­quent­ly it is pro­posed on a tem­po­rary ba­sis that Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) would be re­moved from all food items ex­cept lux­u­ry items and al­co­holic bev­er­ages," he told Par­lia­ment. Ma­haraj, how­ev­er, in­sist­ed yes­ter­day that the Gov­ern­ment had no in­ten­tion of re­mov­ing VAT then putting it back.

"We would not spend all this time and ef­fort to re­move VAT from all those things and then drop it back on the pop­u­la­tion again. To say that is to­tal­ly er­ro­neous and mis­lead­ing and mis­chie­vous. I don't know any­thing about VAT be­ing put back," Ma­haraj in­sist­ed. He said Gov­ern­ment's re­moval of VAT was a strat­e­gy it was com­mit­ted to for the long run.

"Noth­ing is done overnight," he added. De­scrib­ing the is­sue of VAT as one of Gov­ern­ment's long-term chal­lenges, Ma­haraj said his min­istry was fo­cus­ing on ac­quir­ing land to grow more lo­cal food, which would ul­ti­mate­ly low­er the food im­port bill and to make T&T a food-se­cure na­tion.

The Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter said while the VAT-free list of food items was yet to be giv­en the fi­nal nod by an in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, there was al­so a pro­pos­al to look at oth­er prod­ucts which would not car­ry the 15 per cent tax. These he said in­clud­ed tea, jams, frost­ed flakes and juice apart from or­ange juice.