JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Imbert: Cash flow, not bureaucracy, at the core of VAT refunds delay

by

GUARDIAN MEDIA NEWSROOM
32 days ago
20250116
FILE – Minister of Finance Colm Imbert addresses the media at a post-Cabinet media conference held at Whitehall in Port-of-Spain, on Thursday 5 December 2024.

FILE – Minister of Finance Colm Imbert addresses the media at a post-Cabinet media conference held at Whitehall in Port-of-Spain, on Thursday 5 December 2024.

The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance, Colm Im­bert MP, has re­vealed that the de­lay in VAT re­funds to SME com­pa­nies is as a re­sult of a cash flow is­sue, but has in­di­cat­ed monies will be paid by the end of Jan­u­ary.

The min­is­ter was re­spond­ing to con­cerns raised by the Dai­ly Ex­press in its ed­i­to­r­i­al “Drown­ing in VAT bu­reau­cra­cy”, in which it high­light­ed “the tar­di­ness in re­pay­ing VAT to com­pa­nies”.

“Cash flow con­straints have re­sult­ed in a 1-month de­lay in com­plet­ing this ex­er­cise, not bu­reau­cra­cy,” the fi­nance min­is­ter ex­plained in a re­lease.

Min­is­ter Im­bert not­ed:

“As a re­sult of oil and gas pro­duc­tion be­ing be­low es­ti­mat­ed lev­els, cou­pled with de­pressed oil and gas prices in the lat­ter half of cal­en­dar year 2024, the rev­enue col­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in the last 3 months of cal­en­dar 2024 was low­er than ex­pect­ed. As a re­sult, the gov­ern­ment had to pri­or­i­tize on its ex­pen­di­ture, ad­dress ur­gent bills first and de­lay VAT re­funds.”

“How­ev­er, oil and gas prices re­cov­ered in No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber of 2024, and rev­enue col­lec­tion stem­ming from the Tax Amnesty has been on the uptick,” he con­firmed.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Im­bert, “there is now suf­fi­cient cash flow to ful­fil the com­mit­ment made with re­spect to VAT re­funds to SMEs.”

“The Min­istry in­tends to make good on its com­mit­ment and fol­low through on these SME VAT re­funds by the end of Jan­u­ary 2025,” he said.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored