Richard Lord

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira says there is no rea­son to be sad, be­cause the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty leg­is­la­tion had lapsed and can­not be­come law at this time. Tesheira said yes­ter­day that the Sen­ate could not vote on the leg­is­la­tion Thurs­day night be­cause the Par­lia­ment was about to be dis­solved and the bill would have had to be brought back to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for mi­nor amend­ments. The bill was to give ef­fect to dis­band­ing the Board of In­land Rev­enue (BIR) and the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (C&E) to be re­placed by the T&TRA.

Tesheira said she is very con­fi­dent that it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore the leg­is­la­tion is ap­proved. Ex­press­ing con­fi­dence that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM)will be re­turned to of­fice when 2010 elec­tions are called, Tesheira said the mea­sure will be tak­en back to the Par­lia­ment ear­ly in the new term to en­sure the "ayes" have it.

She said all the prepara­to­ry work for es­tab­lish­ment of the T&TRA is go­ing to pro­ceed. Tesheira said the leg­is­la­tion which found favour in the Low­er House had the sup­port of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and some in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. The Gov­ern­ment re­quired the sup­port of some In­de­pen­dents for a suc­cess­ful out­come.

The Sen­ate sit­ting end­ed short­ly be­fore ten o'clock on Thurs­day night with the Lead­ers of Gov­ern­ment busi­ness and Op­po­si­tion, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Con­rad Enill and Su­ruj Ram­bachan re­spec­tive­ly, and the Leader of the In­de­pen­dent bench­es, Sen­a­tor Ramesh De­osaran and Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Dan­ny Mon­tano ex­chang­ing cour­te­sies. Mean­while, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has not an­nounced the elec­tion date but said in com­pli­ance with the law it will be held with­in three months.