by Gail Alexan­der

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) has re­peat­ed calls to Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment a wealth tax on large multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies and large lo­cal cor­po­ra­tions fol­low­ing big prof­its by such com­pa­nies and Re­pub­lic Bank.

The MSJ said via a state­ment yes­ter­day, "We first made this call in April when we said that in­stead of rais­ing the fu­el price, gov­ern­ment should tax the multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies and large lo­cal cor­po­ra­tions and use this ad­di­tion­al rev­enue to main­tain the fu­el price. Of course, (Colm) Im­bert and (PM Kei­th) Row­ley, not car­ing about how peo­ple are liv­ing, didn't take our ad­vice."

"Im­ple­men­ta­tion of a wealth tax is one way the gov­ern­ment can in­crease its rev­enue and thus have the re­sources to make a fair wage of­fer to all the pub­lic sec­tor unions. This is not just about rais­ing mon­ey it is fun­da­men­tal­ly about eq­ui­ty. We can­not con­struct a peace­ful na­tion un­less there's eco­nom­ic and so­cial jus­tice."

The MSJ said the UK gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly in­tro­duced a wealth tax – a 25 per cent wind­fall prof­its tax – on oil com­pa­nies.

"UK PM Boris John­son is very pro-big busi­ness and sup­ports cap­i­tal against the work­ing peo­ple, but even he recog­nis­es that the su­per prof­its be­ing made by the en­er­gy gi­ants is un­ac­cept­able at the same time when or­di­nary peo­ple have to pay more for fu­el and are be­ing very bad­ly af­fect­ed by high/ris­ing food prices."

The MSJ said bp just an­nounced that its prof­its for the three months April to June, 2022 were US$9.26 bil­lion which he de­scribed as "an ob­scene 300 per cent in­crease over the US $3.12 bil­lion it made in the same pe­ri­od in 2021. In the first three months of 2022. BP’s prof­it was US$6.2 bil­lion."

"An­oth­er of the huge multi­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­nies that op­er­ate in T&T is Shell. From April to June, Shell’s prof­it was a hu­mungous US$18 bil­lion!"

The MSJ al­so stat­ed that ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­ny it­self, "BP’s sec­ond-quar­ter re­sults, up from $6.2 bil­lion in the first quar­ter, were dri­ven by strong re­fin­ing mar­gins, “con­tin­u­ing ex­cep­tion­al oil trad­ing per­for­mance” and high­er fu­el prices."

The MSJ called on the com­pa­nies and the gov­ern­ment to dis­close how much of those prof­its were gen­er­at­ed here in T&T and how much the coun­try ben­e­fit­ted from these huge prof­its.

Not­ing oth­er com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing am­mo­nia and methanol, MSJ stat­ed prices of those prod­ucts "have tripled and quadru­pled in the last year on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket and so too have com­pa­ny prof­its."

"Al­so, Re­pub­lic Bank just yes­ter­day an­nounced that its prof­its for the first nine months of 2022 was TT$1.15 bil­lion - an in­crease of TT$109.7 or 10.6 per cent over what it made in the same pe­ri­od in 2021.

"Tax pol­i­cy is one tool avail­able to a gov­ern­ment to tack­le the gross in­equal­i­ties of wealth and in­come that ex­ist in TT. Eq­ui­ty can­not mean com­pa­ny prof­its go up by 10 per cent or 300 per cent a year, while work­ers’ wages re­main the ex­act same for 10 years! This is why the gov­ern­ment’s of­fer of 4 per cent over six years is ridicu­lous, un­fair and un­just!"