Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has warned that more tax­es are on the hori­zon, as she claims Gov­ern­ment will be seek­ing to cov­er a fis­cal deficit which is ex­pect­ed to climb just be­yond $9 bil­lion.

She made the claim dur­ing her re­sponse to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s mid-year bud­get re­view pre­sen­ta­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of be­ing broke and bank­rupt and pro­ceed­ed to list from what she claimed was a gov­ern­ment doc­u­ment out­lin­ing pro­pos­als to in­crease rev­enue col­lec­tion.

“I am ad­vised, and I am ask­ing if this is true, that the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to in­crease VAT. I have a doc­u­ment in my hand that the Gov­ern­ment, I will pro­vide it af­ter the sit­ting min­is­ter, be care­ful. They al­so pro­pose to raise rev­enue to fund ex­pen­di­ture by re­mov­ing some ex­emp­tions from the In­come Tax Act and in­crease penal­ties and fines on cit­i­zens.

“They are plan­ning to cut so­cial pro­grammes, that is one the fa­mous IMF ar­ti­cle talks about, cut­ting back on so­cial pro­grammes, and re­cent­ly we saw the min­is­ter cry­ing about CDAP. Don’t touch that CDAP, leave CDAP there.”

Gov­ern­ment was yes­ter­day seek­ing to sup­ple­ment the Bud­get by $2.3 bil­lion for 12 di­vi­sions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar fur­ther blamed Gov­ern­ment for what she said was its his­to­ry of bor­row­ing which lent to the coun­try’s eco­nom­ic strug­gles.

“The min­is­ter has a his­to­ry of bor­row­ing. I said 61 bil­lion dol­lars, in­crease the bor­row­ing lim­it, which is now 137 bil­lion dol­lars. The min­is­ter came to par­lia­ment re­peat­ed­ly to in­crease the statu­to­ry bor­row­ing lim­it un­der the De­vel­op­ment Loans Act from 30 bil­lion to 45 bil­lion in De­cem­ber 2015, as soon as they came in­to of­fice. Forty-five bil­lion to 55 bil­lion then 55 bil­lion to 65 bil­lion, three times un­der one statute.”

The Op­po­si­tion leader scold­ed the Gov­ern­ment, say­ing, “You can­not tax a coun­try in­to pros­per­i­ty.”

In re­spond­ing to Im­bert’s po­si­tion, shaped by the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF) re­port, that the coun­try’s econ­o­my was re­cov­er­ing, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so dis­put­ed claims the econ­o­my was in its best state in the last decade.

“One decade ago we were in 2014, who was in gov­ern­ment? We were so, I think there is a mis­un­der­stand­ing of that IMF ar­ti­cle 4 re­port and a spin is be­ing put on it be­cause the econ­o­my is not the strongest it has been in a decade. In 2014 we had among the high­est GDP in the coun­try’s his­to­ry.”

As Per­sad-Bisses­sar combed through the var­i­ous heads of ex­pen­di­ture, she al­so flagged is­sues re­lat­ing to short-term em­ploy­ment which was al­so raised in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port.

“When the min­is­ter was asked about the pol­i­cy that would have dri­ven the re­cruit­ment process of the short-term em­ploy­ees, the min­is­ter stat­ed that the min­is­ter can­not pro­vide the re­cruit­ment method used to get each of these per­sons. So you have 279, in one min­istry alone, short-term and you can­not say how they were re­cruit­ed. Is it that you had to wear a bal­isi­er tie in the in­ter­view, is it that you were a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the PNM? We go in­to the last few months of the year and a lot of the 2.3 bil­lion dol­lars is for con­tract em­ploy­ment and short- term.”

She added, “These state­ments are very con­cern­ing when we look at the Au­di­tor’s com­ments, it is quot­ed that there were many in­stances of per­sons be­ing kept on for con­tin­u­ous pe­ri­ods, sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­ceed­ing six months.” Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the re­view as an ex­er­cise that was not on­ly about crunch­ing num­bers but about the wel­fare and liveli­hoods of cit­i­zens.

“It is a vi­tal com­po­nent of the bud­get, it is very im­por­tant to the or­di­nary cit­i­zen and we know it is not just about num­bers. The econ­o­my is per­haps the most sig­nif­i­cant about the wel­fare of our peo­ple and every sin­gle mea­sure brought here to­day will di­rect­ly im­pact every­one, all the re­cur­rent ex­pens­es and of course we will say yes to it but where will we get the mon­ey for it and we sup­port the ap­pro­pri­a­tions as re­vealed.”