Renu­ka Singh

New car deal­ers use just as much for­eign ex­change as used car deal­ers and Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Damien Ly­der is ques­tion­ing why the Gov­ern­ment is not tar­get­ing them.

Ly­der, dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Fi­nance Bill de­bate in Sen­ate yes­ter­day, ques­tioned whether there were any mem­bers of the used car deal­ers who were part of the “big boy club”.

“Be­cause it is clear that they are as­sist­ing those who they are in­ter­est­ed in,” he said.

He said while the used car in­dus­try con­sumed about 30 per cent of the na­tions for­eign ex­change, the new car deal­ers used more.

“The used car deal­ers ac­count for $130 mil­lion, ap­prox­i­mate­ly while new car deal­ers ac­count for, in ex­cess of, $300 mil­lion,” he said.

“It is clear to me once again that this Gov­ern­ment bring­ing this Bill is con­trolled by big busi­ness,” Ly­der said.

“I just want to know if there are any used car deal­ers who are part of this big-boy club that are friends, fam­i­ly and fi­nanciers,” he said.

The Fi­nance Bill was brought to Par­lia­ment by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert last week.

In pi­lot­ing his Bill, Im­bert list­ed the amount of For­eign Ex­change spent by used car deal­ers and even said that Trinidad and To­ba­go had too many ve­hi­cles.

Im­bert in­clud­ed in the Bill a plan to en­sure that for­eign in­sur­ance com­pa­nies to in­cor­po­rate lo­cal­ly, so to be in­clud­ed un­der the In­sur­ance Act.

“It is clear this Gov­ern­ment has no in­ten­tion of as­sist­ing the small, medi­um busi­ness­es in this coun­try,” he said.

His col­league Jear­lean John al­so fo­cused on the car im­port sec­tor.

“The re­moval of mo­tor ve­hi­cle tax for new or used im­port­ed com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle un­der 3 years or elec­tric ve­hi­cles or hy­brid ve­hi­cles is de­signed to fur­ther un­der­mine the For­eign Used In­dus­try which has ben­e­fit­ted the mid­dle and low­er in­come earn­ers,” she said.

“This mea­sure will force the mid­dle and the work­ing class to pur­chase new ve­hi­cles from the deal­ers in new cars at ex­or­bi­tant prices. You see the banks will not lend the work­ing class mon­ey to start a busi­ness, to pur­sue their pas­sion, but they will use month­ly salaries as se­cu­ri­ty to pur­chase new cars at the most oner­ous terms and con­di­tions,” John said.

John said that the used car mar­ket was dri­ven by sup­ply and de­mand.

“So per­sons who are de­pen­dent on it, to have ac­cess to a car, will not on­ly be forced to pur­chase a more ex­pen­sive ve­hi­cle, if they hap­pen to put their hands on one, in ad­di­tion to which, the price of all ve­hi­cles cur­rent­ly on the road will all go up, mak­ing the en­tire used car/sec­ond hand mar­ket more ex­pen­sive,” she said.

John said that the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the claus­es in the Fi­nance Bill will widen the eco­nom­i­cal gap and is “de­signed to make the rich rich­er and the poor and work­ing class poor­er”