KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has de­bunked all claims made by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar that the Gov­ern­ment plans to cut so­cial pro­grammes like the Chron­ic Dis­ease As­sis­tance Pro­gramme (CDAP).

How­ev­er, the Gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to main­tain CDAP’s soar­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in costs is an­oth­er is­sue.

Fol­low­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s mid-year bud­get view pre­sen­ta­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day, Row­ley said the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the ori­gin of the CDAP pro­gramme, to which he was privy while in cab­i­net at the time, was quite dif­fer­ent to that of the present day.

He added that CDAP was not an en­ti­tle­ment but rather cre­at­ed out of the need to as­sist those in­di­vid­u­als deal­ing with chron­ic ill­ness­es.

As such, the Prime Min­is­ter did not see an is­sue with pos­si­bly cut­ting the pro­gramme’s cost in half if it were to come to that.

Row­ley said, “If it is that our cir­cum­stances don’t per­mit us to car­ry a $400 mil­lion pro­gramme but we can car­ry a $200 mil­lion or a $250 mil­lion pro­gramme, what is wrong with that? And even when the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance did not say that we are go­ing to do that.

“I know of no in­ten­tion in this Gov­ern­ment as pol­i­cy to cut the so­cial pro­grammes... All so­cial pro­grammes are based on the Gov­ern­ment hav­ing or ex­pect­ing to get rev­enue and they of­fer it to the peo­ple who are least able to look af­ter them­selves. And this Gov­ern­ment’s record is, in the most dif­fi­cult times, we have main­tained prob­a­bly the best so­cial pro­gramme pack­ages in the Com­mon­wealth.”

He added, “In the mid­dle of a pan­dem­ic, when the econ­o­my was lit­er­al­ly close to be­ing shut down ex­cept for the en­er­gy sec­tor, the Gov­ern­ment main­tained a com­mit­ment to get food in peo­ple’s hous­es, to put cash in peo­ple’s pock­ets so they can be pur­chasers, to main­tain jobs, to make sure small busi­ness­es were op­er­a­tional, so when the virus was no longer with us, you could open your door and jobs could still be there. But they’re (Op­po­si­tion) talk­ing from both sides of their neck.”

Fir­ing back at the Op­po­si­tion, Row­ley al­so ques­tioned what poli­cies the UNC fol­lowed when they cre­at­ed so­cial pro­grammes such as Colour Me Or­ange and “the mur­der­ous” life sport.

Row­ley al­so con­demned Per­sad-Bisses­sar for her “at­tempt to de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­lead the pub­lic” when it came to her claims that more Val­ue Added Tax (VAT) is on the way.

“Where did the Op­po­si­tion leader get that from? I can tell you with­out fear of con­tra­dic­tion, nowhere in the cor­ri­dors of the pews in this Gov­ern­ment that I lead, is VAT in­crease a dis­cus­sion, nowhere. As a mat­ter of fact, one of the first things we did in our first ad­min­is­tra­tion was to cut VAT by 15 per cent to 12.5 per cent. What we did do was to put VAT on lux­u­ry items, and we make no apolo­gies for that,” he said.

“You want to bring in straw­ber­ries, you want to bring in caviar, you want to bring in so and so, those are not pri­or­i­ties and, there­fore, you pay VAT on it if you want to bring it in. And our ir­re­spon­si­ble col­leagues, who have noth­ing to be ir­re­spon­si­ble for, will go on a plat­form and say we will re­move VAT for 7,000 items. What are these 7,000 items that we are en­gaged in now that they will re­move VAT from? Cham­pagne, vod­ka, caviar and stur­geon eggs?

“They will re­move VAT from 7,000 items so the peo­ple of To­ba­go, in a very dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od, have no VAT on all the ba­sic food items. They have a whole huge list of ze­ro VAT items. Some­body finds you need 7,000 more items from which VAT should be re­moved, so that the peo­ple won’t be op­pressed.”

Some­thing good hap­pen­ing in T&T

Con­tin­u­ing to quash claims made by the Op­po­si­tion leader, Row­ley al­so as­sured the pub­lic there was no such thing as “pre­sump­tive tax”.

Ac­cord­ing to the IMF, pre­sump­tive tax­a­tion in­volves the use of in­di­rect means to as­cer­tain tax li­a­bil­i­ty, which dif­fer from the usu­al rules based on the tax­pay­er’s ac­counts

Row­ley said, “What is pre­sump­tive tax­a­tion? I am ad­vis­ing the coun­try now, every time you see this Gov­ern­ment bring on pre­sump­tive tax, you pay it with a pre­sump­tive cheque.”

While ad­mit­ting there were some ar­eas that Gov­ern­ment will have to sup­press fi­nan­cial­ly, Row­ley said based on the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s (IMF) lat­est re­port, some­thing good is hap­pen­ing in the coun­try.

Row­ley said, “As we go for­ward to the end of the fis­cal year, noth­ing ex­tra-dra­mat­i­cal will hap­pen ex­cept that the Min­istry of Fi­nance will have to, in some ar­eas sup­press cer­tain things, in oth­er ar­eas pri­ori­tise cer­tain things.

“We are, in fact, go­ing through and have been go­ing through a very dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od. As head of the Gov­ern­ment, I more than every­body else, I know what a dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od is. The fact that we’re aware of where we are to­day and get­ting an as­sess­ment by the IMF, a re­port like we just got, even though dif­fi­cul­ties are still with us and that there are chal­lenges and pit­falls ahead, for the coun­try to have got a re­port like that, it tells us that some­thing good is hap­pen­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.”