Gail Alexan­der

"I un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise to all."That apol­o­gy came yes­ter­day from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert fol­low­ing his re­cent con­tro­ver­sial state­ments on "wage re­straint" and "no ri­ots yet" he made at last week's con­fer­ence with vis­it­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­ey Fund (IMF) of­fi­cials.

Im­bert's apol­o­gy was made in Par­lia­ment as he pi­lot­ed a mo­tion to con­firm tax or­ders in the 2017 bud­get. It al­so fol­lows a de­mand for an apol­o­gy from the trade union lead­ers and a pub­lic dress-down from Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley at last week's post-Cab­i­net press con­fer­ence.

He pub­licly scold­ed Im­bert, mak­ing it clear he was not hap­py with the man who acts as Prime Min­is­ter when he is out of the coun­try.He likened the man­ner in which the Fi­nance Min­is­ter made the dis­clo­sures to a doc­tor with no bed­side man­ners.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter broke off from speak­ing on the mo­tion to ad­dress the is­sue of his re­marks which had dogged him since it oc­curred last week.

Im­bert has been cen­tre-stage of protests from unions and oth­er sec­tors fol­low­ing his re­marks at the IMF meet­ing where he al­lud­ed to "wage re­straint" and a "0-0-0" po­si­tion by Gov­ern­ment con­cern­ing pub­lic sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions.

He al­so drew fire for quip­ping he had in­creased fu­el prices twice and since no one had "ri­ot­ed yet" he might raise it again next April. He de­nied he had said "wage freeze" and clar­i­fied that the "0-0-0" was the start-up ba­sis for ne­go­ti­a­tions, not the end.

Row­ley al­so at­tempt­ed to de­flect pub­lic anger, say­ing Im­bert's state­ment was spec­u­la­tive, lacked sub­stance and was made in a "vac­u­um." He sig­nalled no fi­nal de­ci­sion was made on wages and even if "less" was avail­able, there would be "some­thing to be had."

Joint Trade Union Move­ment pres­i­dent An­cel Ro­get sub­se­quent­ly de­mand­ed that Im­bert apol­o­gise to the Na­tion­al Tri­par­tite Ad­vi­so­ry Coun­cil for his "dis­re­spect­ful and dan­ger­ous com­ments."

Yes­ter­day Im­bert in­formed the Par­lia­ment: "There was a con­fer­ence in T&T last week de­signed to deal with chal­lenges fac­ing T&T and the economies of the Caribbean and dur­ing that con­fer­ence I made cer­tain state­ments and on re­flec­tion and hav­ing re­viewed and looked at the tapes of the com­ments I made, and the man­ner in which I made them, I re­alise this would have up­set a lot of peo­ple and there­fore I take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­re­served­ly apol­o­gise to all of them."

His apol­o­gy was in­ter­rupt­ed twice by loud laugh­ter from the Op­po­si­tion bench.

Row­ley was ab­sent for Im­bert's apol­o­gy. Around that same time Row­ley was meet­ing with mem­bers of Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, St Ann's.

NEW FIS­CAL MEA­SURES

On the tax or­der mo­tion, Im­bert said the tax on peo­ple and com­pa­nies earn­ing $1 mil­lion was sim­i­lar to mea­sures by the US Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He said the tax on high in­come earn­ers would yield $80 mil­lion and that showed how many high in­come earn­ers TT had. The pro­ject­ed yield from "mil­lion dol­lar" earn­ing com­pa­nies is $560 mil­lion

He said $750 mil­lion was al­so raised from the re­cent tax amnesty which showed "quite a few don't pay tax­es."

Im­bert said $1 mil­lion was col­lect­ed in the first ten days of the sev­en per cent on­line tax. This ap­plies to goods bought for per­son­al use via the In­ter­net and brought to T&T via air freight. It's pro­ject­ed to yield $70 mil­lion.

Im­bert said he was ex­am­in­ing com­plaints from Carib Brew­ery about un­fair com­pe­ti­tion and im­porters of for­eign beer "dump­ing" prod­ucts in T&T.

Cab­i­net would al­so de­cide on rep­re­sen­ta­tion by the T&T Cham­ber and hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try for waiv­er of pro­posed al­co­hol tax on litre-boxed wine un­til af­ter New Year's since stocks had been en­route when the tax was an­nounced on Sep­tem­ber 30, he said.