KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert says the Gov­ern­ment took no de­ci­sion to in­crease the Val­ued-added Tax (VAT) rate and la­bels the Op­po­si­tion’s claim that it in­tend­ed to do such as po­lit­i­cal dis­hon­esty. As Im­bert kicked off the de­bate on The Fi­nance (Sup­ple­men­tary Ap­pro­pri­a­tion) (Fi­nan­cial Year 2024) Bill, 2024, in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, he said the Cab­i­net note the Op­po­si­tion has shows cal­cu­la­tions and not de­ci­sions.

He said Op­po­si­tion mem­bers are seek­ing to “buss the mark first” as the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ in­ter­nal war­fare con­tin­ues.

He said that Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke “ar­rant fool­ish­ness” in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day, and he had to read about it in a dai­ly news­pa­per on Tues­day morn­ing.

“Ar­rant fool­ish­ness, mis­lead­ing, un­truth­ful, and down­right po­lit­i­cal dis­hon­esty,” Im­bert dubbed her state­ment. Im­bert ac­cused the me­dia of com­plic­i­ty, say­ing he was sure the re­porter and ed­i­tor re­spon­si­ble for the sto­ry had the doc­u­ment Per­sad-Bisses­sar used when she said the Cab­i­net de­cid­ed to in­crease VAT.

He said the doc­u­ment avail­able to the me­dia showed cal­cu­la­tions of how much rev­enue the coun­try would lose and gain by re­duc­ing and in­creas­ing VAT by one per cent. It al­so showed the same cal­cu­la­tions for per­son­al in­come tax and cor­po­ra­tion tax. “It is a work­ing pa­per that is pre­sent­ed to all min­is­ters of fi­nance and has been for the last 30 years, but the doc­u­ment con­tained no de­ci­sion and no rec­om­men­da­tion to the Cab­i­net, and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion had that doc­u­ment in her pos­ses­sion,” Im­bert said.

It in­trigued him that the new ar­ti­cle in­clud­ed many things and then stat­ed in­creas­es in cor­po­ra­tion tax, in­di­vid­ual in­come tax, and VAT, con­trary to the doc­u­ment. He ques­tioned why the news­pa­per and Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not read the whole doc­u­ment. Im­bert said it would show that if VAT de­creas­es by one per cent, the coun­try could lose $500 mil­lion in rev­enue or a one per cent re­duc­tion in cor­po­ra­tion tax could see it miss out on $300 mil­lion. “Why did not they read that part? This is what we have to deal with in this coun­try. Po­lit­i­cal dis­hon­est­ly. I con­demn it, and I urge the me­dia to be more re­spon­si­ble.”

Mark: More tax­es will

cre­ate so­cial un­rest

But Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark dou­bled down on the ac­cu­sa­tion, say­ing the Op­po­si­tion has Cab­i­net Note 1032, dat­ed May 21, 2024, which ex­pos­es all the Gov­ern­ment’s de­nials. Mark said that as the na­tion­al deficit widens with the Gov­ern­ment seek­ing a na­tion­al bud­get ap­pro­pri­a­tion of $3.28 bil­lion in sup­ple­men­tal funds, it is giv­ing it­self rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing op­tions by in­creas­ing VAT to 15 per cent, Cor­po­ra­tion Tax, and bank­ing tax while re­mov­ing sub­si­dies, so­cial pro­grammes, grants, al­lowances.

Mark said he has a list of the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mea­sures, and it must come clean to tell T&T it is eco­nom­i­cal­ly bank­rupt and brought mea­sures through the Cab­i­net to raise close to $4 bil­lion from cit­i­zens’ pock­ets. “Mr Pres­i­dent, our back is bosi back now. We can­not take no more pres­sure, no more tax­es. The peo­ple are say­ing no more tax­es. They can­not take more,” Mark said.

He warned the Gov­ern­ment that there would be a so­cial ri­ot if the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued to pres­sure poor peo­ple. He said the Op­po­si­tion is will­ing to work with the Gov­ern­ment, but it must come with a plan and speak the truth. Ear­li­er, Im­bert sought to al­lay con­cerns about the sup­ple­men­tal funds, say­ing that the ap­pro­pri­a­tion gives the Gov­ern­ment the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to spend on ur­gent items.

He said al­though there was the usu­al noise dur­ing the mid-year re­view in 2023, the pro­ject­ed deficit was close to $4 bil­lion, but the Gov­ern­ment end­ed up spend­ing less than $3 bil­lion. “If you do not ap­pro­pri­ate, you can­not spend.”

The Gov­ern­ment based the 2024 Na­tion­al Bud­get on a nat­ur­al gas net­back of US$5 per MMb­tu fol­low­ing its cal­cu­la­tions. Im­bert said when he pre­sent­ed the bud­get in Sep­tem­ber 2023, the Hen­ry Hub Nat­ur­al Gas Spot Price was US$2.64 per MMB­tu. How­ev­er, it dropped to as low as $1.49 in March 2024. Yes­ter­day, the price was US$3.14. Im­bert said he saw a re­mark­able re­cov­ery in prices over the last month.