Gail Alexan­der

The PP ad­min­is­tra­tion is afraid to re­turn the prop­er­ty tax and to tack­le tax and oth­er re­forms, PNM MP Paula Gopee-Scoon said yes­ter­day. In her bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, Gopee-Scoon said the Gov­ern­ment had cut the fu­el sub­sidy in part with "great trep­i­da­tion." She said the bud­get out­lined many things but many with­out time­frame.

Gopee-Scoon said the heart of T&T?is not with PP any­more and the PNM's re­cent march had made an im­pact. She said Sec­tion 34 is­sue had com­pro­mised T&T's in­ter­na­tion­al im­age and al­so af­fect­ed its dri­ve to at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment. She said T&T had in­ter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions and agree­ments which should be ho­n­oured.

Gopee-Scoon said two re­leas­es by the US Em­bassy on the re­cent ex­tra­di­tion is­sues were not nor­mal oc­cur­rences. She said she would not be sur­prised if in­ter­ven­tions at high­er lev­els al­so were made by the US. Say­ing the bud­get was an un­sci­en­tif­ic plan, lack­ing in de­tails and very su­per­fi­cial, she said the re­al bud­get was yet to come.

Gopee-Scoon said she no­ticed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai had ad­mit­ted his job was dif­fi­cult. She said he would soon re­alise he was not in the cor­po­rate world again. She asked if some of the bud­get were oth­er PP je­fes' ideas more than his.

While she sanc­tioned the PP's pub­lic pri­vate sec­tor ini­tia­tive to han­dle projects, she warned that could elic­it a "feed­ing fren­zy" by un­suit­able ap­pli­cants and a lot of un­so­licit­ed pro­pos­als. She warned the PP to be care­ful of mem­bers' be­hav­iour in the sce­nario. Gopee-Soon said the crunch would al­so hit the PP in the en­er­gy sec­tor which would not con­tribute much to rev­enues un­der present plans.