PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher

@guardian.co.tt

Con­cerns about the in­con­sis­tent pay­ment of VAT as well as the lim­it­ed con­sul­ta­tion with the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty were brought to the fore dur­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s (TTMA) Lead­er­ship Dis­cus­sion and Net­work­ing Event at the Hy­att Re­gency yes­ter­day.

The event saw the TTMA elect Emil Ramkissoon as its new pres­i­dent, but al­so saw sig­nif­i­cant dis­course be­tween the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and gov­ern­ment min­is­ters con­cern­ing rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and tax im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo and Plan­ning Min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh spoke on the dif­fi­cul­ties in pro­vid­ing VAT pay­outs to busi­ness­es dur­ing the event, but ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of Blue Wa­ters, Do­minic Hadeed, ar­gued that the lim­it­ed in­for­ma­tion about the tim­ing of the pay­ments was more detri­men­tal.

“It’s the in­con­sis­ten­cy and the lumpi­ness of the lit­tle that we’re get­ting that’s still a prob­lem. Even if you could say you’re get­ting 25 per cent of what you used to get every oth­er month, that’s help­ful, un­til you could tell us when you could give us more. That will help,” said Hadeed.

He al­so ques­tioned poli­cies im­ple­ment­ed by the gov­ern­ment in the fis­cal year, which may have ac­tu­al­ly re­duce rev­enue earned by the gov­ern­ment from the busi­ness sec­tor. Hadeed felt the gov­ern­ment may have been bet­ter suit­ed hav­ing a di­a­logue with the busi­ness sec­tor be­fore in­tro­duc­ing these poli­cies.

He said, “You take 30 per cent of what we make with­out do­ing any­thing, with­out in­vest­ing any­thing. And you’re all com­pe­tent peo­ple, I want to tell you that. We’re ex­cit­ed. I would not have talked like this if I didn’t think you guys could do some­thing. But if I were you guys, and you know which of us pay tax­es, so you know if you did some­thing and some­body made more mon­ey, you will get more. Just sit with them and say, hey, how could I help you make more mon­ey?

“Be­cause when you add tax­es, like ex­cise tax and this and that, and don’t give any VAT re­funds, you think you’re mak­ing more mon­ey, but you’re re­al­ly not,” Hadeed said, mak­ing ref­er­ence to the 100 per cent ex­cise in­crease on cig­a­rettes.

“You all have raised the cig­a­rette tax by 100 per cent. Just to let you know, the sales of com­pa­nies in the cig­a­rette busi­ness have been cut in half. You’re mak­ing no more mon­ey from us, and I’m telling you, peo­ple are not smok­ing less. They’re smug­gling things. This coun­try sells $1.2 bil­lion a year in cig­a­rettes. All of those cig­a­rettes fit in two 40-foot con­tain­ers a week. They can smug­gle that in, you’ll get noth­ing. So the more tax­es you put up, be­cause our bor­ders are porous, the more rev­enue you’re los­ing. Sit with us,” said Hadeed, who al­so sug­gest­ed there were oth­er strate­gies that could have led to in­creased rev­enues such as pub­lic pri­vate part­ner­ships or the in­tro­duc­tion of toll roads.

Re­spond­ing to Hadeed’s com­ment on the Gov­ern­ment tak­ing 30 per cent tax with­out do­ing any­thing, Tan­coo said the Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to main­tain lights, roads, ed­u­cate the work­force and sub­sidise fu­el, among oth­er re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“All of those things are paid for by gov­ern­ment. Some­how, we must fund those things. It’s not just the trans­fers and sub­si­dies,” said Tan­coo.

Tan­coo al­so de­nied claims that the gov­ern­ment’s fis­cal poli­cies were tar­get­ing spe­cif­ic groups, such as bars and cig­a­rette smok­ers.

“It is not a mat­ter of tar­get­ing. It’s about try­ing to get a bal­ance,” said the min­is­ter, who as­sured that poli­cies were not ir­re­versible.