Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi says com­mer­cial prop­er­ty tax is not yet on the ta­ble.

Speak­ing with re­porters at the open­ing of the Southex In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­po at Gulf City Mall, La Ro­main, on Wednes­day, Al-Rawi said while the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will re­veal the spe­cif­ic date of the com­mence­ment of the prop­er­ty tax, it will def­i­nite­ly be be­fore the end of Sep­tem­ber 2024.

He said, “Com­mer­cial prop­er­ty tax is not on the ta­ble, res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax is. It’s all lo­cal gov­ern­ment. The Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tion’s Re­form Act was in­clud­ed in a bill which we passed last year. Sec­tion 10 of the Prop­er­ty Act was amend­ed so that prop­er­ty tax is as­sessed by the BIR but col­lect­ed by and re­ceived by the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment au­thor­i­ties.

“That is on track for this year so that each cor­po­ra­tion re­ceives 10s, 20s, 30s, of mil­lions of dol­lars ex­tra which goes di­rect­ly in­to their pock­ets, and then they spend di­rect­ly in­to the com­mu­ni­ties un­der the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Law.”

Fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment in Mon­day’s Bud­get that the Po­lice Ser­vice re­cruit in­take will in­crease to 1,000, Al-Rawi was asked whether he had al­so ad­vo­cat­ed for an in­crease in mu­nic­i­pal po­lice re­cruits.

He said the mu­nic­i­pal po­lice re­cruits have al­ready been in­creased, with the man­pow­er at 831.

“That state­ment (Im­bert ‘s state­ment) was in re­la­tion to the TTPS, the Mu­nic­i­pal Po­lice al­ready catered for in our fi­nan­cial prepa­ra­tions to ac­cel­er­ate the in­put to 1,500,” Al-Rawi said.

Southex CEO George Singh said Southex is cel­e­brat­ing 33 years of ex­is­tence, and is the largest run­ning trade show in the coun­try.

Hit­ting back at naysay­ers who com­plain that the Gov­ern­ment is wast­ing mon­ey on projects in San Fer­nan­do, he said those projects are ben­e­fit­ing Southex, the peo­ple of San Fer­nan­do, and, by ex­ten­sion, the coun­try.

“Southex In­ter­na­tion­al Ex­po has ben­e­fit­ed in a very pos­i­tive way from the growth and de­vel­op­ment of San Fer­nan­do. We have al­ways been there for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, as we con­tin­ue to pro­vide this plat­form for new busi­ness to grow and for old busi­ness­es to mar­ket their new prod­ucts.”

Singh, who hosts ma­jor Car­ni­val events, said he al­so ex­pects a bumper en­ter­tain­ment sea­son for 2024.

In com­mend­ing Singh for his con­tri­bu­tion to busi­ness and en­ter­tain­ment in south Trinidad, Greater San Fer­nan­do Area Cham­ber pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh said eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in San Fer­nan­do has im­proved since the pan­dem­ic.

“Some buzz has been re-cre­at­ed, es­pe­cial­ly since we ap­proach the Christ­mas sea­son and the fact that the Gov­ern­ment has spo­ken to back­pay to pub­lic ser­vants. Those of us in busi­ness will be ex­cit­ed, will be look­ing for­ward to that flow of mon­ey in that eco­nom­ic sys­tem that will dri­ve re­tail for­ward, it will en­cour­age man­u­fac­ture, en­cour­age dis­tri­b­u­tion,” he said.

The event will run un­til Sun­day.