Sean Nero

Ramdeo Per­sad, pres­i­dent of the Quar­ry As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (QATT), says im­po­si­tion of a roy­al­ty tax on quar­ry op­er­a­tors will be an ob­sta­cle to the Gov­ern­ment's plan for low-cost hous­ing. He said the op­er­a­tors are al­ready pay­ing cor­po­rate and val­ue added tax­es and more puni­tive tax­a­tion will have to be passed on to the con­sumer.

"De­spite stren­u­ous ob­jec­tions from our­selves over the past sev­er­al years, it ap­pears that it is the Gov­ern­ment's in­ten­tion to im­ple­ment a roy­al­ty tax on ag­gre­gate won from pri­vate­ly-owned lands. QATT has al­ways main­tained that it is un­fair that op­er­a­tors, who have in­her­it­ed quar­ry lands from their fore­bear­ers, or pur­chased lands at great per­son­al sac­ri­fice, should now be placed in the same cat­e­go­ry as op­er­a­tors who have re­ceived state lands at no cost and pay a roy­al­ty on ma­te­r­i­al pro­duced for this priv­i­lege," he said.

"Al­ready the in­dus­try is bur­dened by a se­ries of tax­es, in­clud­ing per­son­al and cor­po­rate tax­es, Val­ue Added Tax and con­tri­bu­tions to the Green Fund and is in no po­si­tion to ab­sorb any fur­ther tax­a­tion giv­en its loss of mar­ket share to the ag­gre­gate im­porters.

We can­not un­der­stand the need by the Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce a fur­ther tax in these try­ing eco­nom­ic times. Should this tax be forced up­on us in the cur­rent sce­nario, we have no al­ter­na­tive but to pass it on to the con­sumer. This will in ef­fect sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease prices of all quar­ry prod­ucts and re­lat­ed facets of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. This may negate the Gov­ern­ment's good in­ten­tion of keep­ing hous­ing at an af­ford­able."

Per­sad said while these new rev­enue gen­er­at­ing mea­sures are soon to be im­ple­ment­ed, the is­sue of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing has still not been ad­dressed. He said the law­break­ers will not be af­fect­ed when the roy­al­ty tax takes ef­fect.

He said the QATT con­tin­ues its bat­tle with the state for up­grade and re­pair of roads lead­ing to quar­ries in sev­er­al ar­eas. Per­sad said the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion had al­lo­cat­ed $205 mil­lion for the up­grades to be done by the Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­istry, but the project nev­er start­ed and road con­di­tions have de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

In an e-mail re­sponse, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, said based on da­ta ob­tained by his min­istry, there has been a de­crease in the num­ber of re­ports of il­le­gal quar­ry­ing ac­tiv­i­ty. On the is­sue of li­cens­es, Ram­nar­ine said at the end of 2012 there were 43 li­censed quar­ries op­er­at­ing in T&T and an ad­di­tion­al 17 were be­ing li­censed and 73 com­pris­ing whose li­cens­es had ex­pired. He said those will be dealt with ear­ly this year.

"Dur­ing the last pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic ex­pan­sion the de­mand for min­er­als was much high­er than the lo­cal sup­ply. In part, this was due to mass dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion in the sec­tor, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to the grant­i­ng of li­cens­es and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of reg­u­la­tions.

Over the years, ran­dom changes to the process have made it dif­fi­cult for op­er­a­tors to ap­ply for or re­new li­cens­es with­out great in­con­ve­nience and un­due ex­pense. New reg­u­la­tions are re­quired to stream­line the process if the sec­tor is to grow and de­vel­op," he said.