The Ja­maican gov­ern­ment has an­nounced a raft of mea­sures aimed at im­prov­ing the so­cio-eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion of Ja­maicans, in­clud­ing in­creas­ing the in­come tax thresh­old will to two mil­lion dol­lars (One Ja­maica dol­lar=US$0.008 cents) over a three-year pe­ri­od.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Fay­val Williams in her first-ever bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion to Par­lia­ment on Tues­day night, said that the in­come tax mea­sure would go in­to ef­fect from April 1, this year, with­out in­di­cat­ing the cost of the ini­tia­tive to the trea­sury.

She told leg­is­la­tors that the thresh­old would first rise to J$1.8 mil­lion, in­creas­ing slight­ly to  J$1.9 mil­lion, and fi­nal­ly to two mil­lion dol­lars.

“Do­ing it this way means our hard­work­ing tax­pay­ers don’t have to guess year af­ter year if the thresh­old is go­ing to in­crease,” she said, in keep­ing with a trend set by the rul­ing Ja­maica Labour Par­ty (JLP) dat­ing back to 2016.

The thresh­old was raised to J$1.7 mil­lion at the start of the cur­rent fis­cal year in April, at a cost of nine bil­lion dol­lars.

Williams al­so an­nounced that in 2023, there were 652,220 in­di­vid­u­als earn­ing up to six mil­lion dol­lars an­nu­al­ly and pay­ing in­come tax.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said that her “good news”  bud­get con­tained a raft of in­cen­tives for con­sumers and busi­ness­es in­clud­ing a one bil­lion dol­lar sub­sidy to as­sist the first 20,000 cus­tomers who sign up with Ja­maica Pub­lic Ser­vice(JPS) for pre­paid elec­tric­i­ty; an 80 per cent cut in bond on du­ties for new car deal­ers; as well as longer re­pay­ment pe­ri­od on stu­dent loans.

She said that for the first time in a decade, based on fis­cal rules, the Ja­maica gov­ern­ment could have run a deficit equiv­a­lent to “no more than 0.3 per cent of GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct), and that would still keep us on the path to 60 per cent debt-to-GDP by fis­cal year 2027/28”.

But she said Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness de­cid­ed against do­ing so as it would send “a very bad sig­nal to the world in an elec­tion year.

“We want to pre­serve the hard-won gains of the peo­ple of Ja­maica and their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren so they will not have to suck salt through wood­en spoon again,” she said.

Williams al­so an­nounced that the Tax Ad­min­is­tra­tion Ja­maica (TAJ) will be in­tro­duc­ing Sat­ur­day op­er­a­tions at se­lect tax of­fices in every parish across the is­land in a move aimed at im­prov­ing tax­pay­er con­ve­nience and boost­ing rev­enue col­lec­tion.

“We will an­nounce those dates, as those of­fices are open in every parish across Ja­maica…. We should make it as easy as pos­si­ble for Ja­maicans to pay their tax­es,” she said, not­ing that while ap­prox­i­mate­ly 80 per cent of rev­enues col­lect­ed by the TAJ is from on­line ser­vices, the ini­tia­tive is ex­pect­ed to pro­vide tax­pay­ers greater flex­i­bil­i­ty and ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to tax ser­vices.

“While we strong­ly en­cour­age the use of our on­line ac­cess, we recog­nise that it takes time to tran­si­tion some peo­ple to the on­line world. And so, I asked the com­mis­sion­er of tax­es to have a tax of­fice opened in every parish on a Sat­ur­day to ease the con­ges­tion in the week to make it eas­i­er.”

“We are a Gov­ern­ment that lis­tens; we are a Gov­ern­ment that cares and hav­ing a tax of­fice that is open in every parish on a Sat­ur­day is good news,” Williams said.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said that the sub­sidy to as­sist JPS  con­sumers is part of wider ef­forts to com­bat theft and sup­port low-in­come house­holds.

“This one bil­lion dol­lars will go to­wards pay­ing for house wiring and in­spec­tion, help­ing those with il­le­gal con­nec­tions to get legal­ly and safe­ly con­nect­ed to the JPS grid,” she said, de­scrib­ing it as “the most am­bi­tious pro­gramme to al­low af­ford­able ac­cess to pre-paid elec­tric­i­ty.

“We know that the cost of house wiring and in­spec­tion can be pro­hib­i­tive for many peo­ple, and so, as a car­ing gov­ern­ment, we are ab­sorb­ing that cost in or­der to be­gin ad­dress­ing this mas­sive elec­tric­i­ty theft prob­lem.”

William told leg­is­la­tors that pre-paid elec­tric­i­ty “will put le­gal elec­tric­i­ty with­in reach for many.

“Be­cause pre-paid elec­tric­i­ty al­lows you to buy the amount of elec­tric­i­ty you can af­ford when you can af­ford it, you have com­plete con­trol. You will be able to buy the card or vouch­ers from hun­dreds of out­lets across Ja­maica, just like how you buy phone cards now. You may al­so be able to top up on­line. The tech­nol­o­gy will make it easy.”

Williams said in Jan­u­ary this year, En­er­gy Min­is­ter Daryl Vaz told Par­lia­ment that in 2023, “the elec­tric­i­ty stolen amount­ed to a stag­ger­ing J$40.385 bil­lion. That works out to J$13,500 for every man, woman, and child in Ja­maica.”

“I be­lieve that on both sides of the aisle, we all want a so­lu­tion be­cause all of us who pay for elec­tric­i­ty have this added bur­den on our month­ly bills,” she said, not­ing that Op­po­si­tion Spokesman on En­er­gy Phillip Paulwell al­so shared the da­ta.

“But it’s not just those of us who can af­ford post-paid elec­tric­i­ty who bear this bur­den. More im­por­tant­ly, the peo­ple who steal elec­tric­i­ty are in need of a so­lu­tion be­cause, for the ma­jor­i­ty of them, the cost of post-paid elec­tric­i­ty is pro­hib­i­tive rel­a­tive to their earn­ing ca­pac­i­ty.”

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter said pre-paid elec­tric­i­ty is avail­able to any­one, not just vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties or peo­ple with il­le­gal con­nec­tions, adding that the GCT on pre-paid elec­tric­i­ty is sev­en per cent.

“This is an of­fer you can­not refuse,” she said.

Williams said that un­der the ini­tia­tive, the first 20,000 new pre-paid cus­tomers will get J$4,000 cred­it for elec­tric­i­ty per month for six months un­der the Gov­ern­ment’s House Wiring and In­spec­tion Pro­gramme that will be im­ple­ment­ed by Ja­maica So­cial In­vest­ment Fund (JSIF).

She said half of the J$4,000 cred­it will come from the JPS and the oth­er half will come from the Gov­ern­ment and that the JPS and JSIF will iden­ti­fy vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties and pro­vide the sign-up pro­ce­dures.

The JPS da­ta shows av­er­age month­ly bill for pre-paid cus­tomers is J$8,000 and that there are 17,000 cus­tomers cur­rent­ly us­ing the pre-paid elec­tric­i­ty me­ter.

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Mar 12, CMC –

CMC/ah/ir/2025