From re­cent pro­nounce­ments made by sev­er­al gov­ern­ment and oth­er pub­lic per­sons, it seems clear that the prop­er­ty tax will be re-in­tro­duced in the com­ing bud­get. We are all aware that in the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions Act, 1990, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of prop­er­ty tax was sole­ly that of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies. This was changed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion in 2009 trans­fer­ring the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for prop­er­ty tax di­rect­ly to cen­tral gov­ern­ment. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship re­versed this and placed a stop on the pay­ment of all prop­er­ty tax­es mak­ing 2009 the last year that prop­er­ty tax should be paid.

Now that it is about to be re-in­tro­duced, I wish to point out that the prop­er place for the col­lec­tion and re­ten­tion of prop­er­ty tax­es would be the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies. It would be most de­sir­able for mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions to have knowl­edge of all the rel­e­vant de­tails of prop­er­ties lo­cat­ed in the re­gion­al area.

Most im­por­tant would be the names of the own­ers of these prop­er­ties. The best way to mon­i­tor own­er­ship and use of prop­er­ties is by con­trol of the prop­er­ty tax­es sys­tem. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the re­ten­tion of prop­er­ty tax­es by the lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies would al­low a greater de­gree of free­dom and flex­i­bil­i­ty for lo­cal gov­ern­ment and not be to­tal­ly de­pen­dent on cen­tral gov­ern­ment. It is well known that fi­nanc­ing by cen­tral gov­ern­ment is of­ten ir­reg­u­lar and un­pre­dictable.

Of ma­jor con­cern is that not a sin­gle lo­cal gov­ern­ment body has raised this mat­ter and I sin­gle out the As­so­ci­a­tion of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bod­ies which should take on this strug­gle.

Lennox Sankers­ingh

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