On Oc­to­ber 4, with un­der two min­utes left in her three-hour-and-41 minute re­sponse to the 2025 bud­get speech, Op­po­si­tion Leader and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Par­lia­ment, “Madame Speak­er, say where would we get the mon­ey for all these plans and poli­cies we have in place?

“The UNC has put out a very com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Plan, which I will not pun­ish the mem­bers here to lis­ten to to­day. But I would in­vite you to go up on the UNC’s web­site—I had shared it be­fore in this Par­lia­ment—to look at our Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Plan to see where we would source the fund­ing to car­ry out these plans.”

“Fur­ther, what we would want to do, and have to do, is to wipe out, scrape off, re­move the waste, the cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment, there­by keep tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars for de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“So to­day, whether the Min­is­ter (of Fi­nance) speaks for five, ten or 24 hours, it will change noth­ing. It will fix noth­ing. It will de­liv­er noth­ing.

“How­ev­er, the av­er­age cit­i­zen of this coun­try knows the UNC cares and I care. This gov­ern­ment will soon hear the voic­es of the 99 per cent on elec­tion day.

“I thank you very much, Madame Speak­er.”

UNC’s plan

I ac­cept­ed Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s in­vi­ta­tion and vis­it­ed the web­site of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, where I found a doc­u­ment ti­tled ‘Na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Mas­ter­plan 2020- 2025.’

The cov­er of the doc­u­ment out­lined that Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­liv­ered it as part of her re­sponse to 2020 bud­get on Oc­to­ber 11, 2019.

So it seems that the UNC po­lit­i­cal leader opt­ed not to add ten min­utes to her re­sponse to the 2025 bud­get by pro­vid­ing the na­tion with some de­tails of how she plans to raise mon­ey to fund her am­bi­tious spend­ing pro­gramme.

She pre­ferred to re­fer lis­ten­ers, view­ers and read­ers of her pre­sen­ta­tion to a five-year-old doc­u­ment that she de­liv­ered in re­sponse to the 2020 bud­get.

In Oc­to­ber 2024, the ex­tent of the de­tails of Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s fis­cal pol­i­cy ideas was that if the vot­ers elect­ed her par­ty to lead the coun­try at the next gen­er­al elec­tions, she would “wipe out, scrape off, re­move the waste, the cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment,” which would “keep tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars for de­liv­ery of goods and ser­vices to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

The Na­tion­al Eco­nom­ic Trans­for­ma­tion Mas­ter­plan 2020- 2025 con­tains some in­ter­est­ing pro­pos­als—which one as­sumes, giv­en the fact that Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar point­ed to the doc­u­ment in her bud­get re­sponse—re­main the pol­i­cy po­si­tions of the Op­po­si­tion UNC.

The Oc­to­ber 2019 doc­u­ment states that the UNC would:

* Scrap the pro­posed T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty;

* Scrap the prop­er­ty tax;

* Re­duce per­son­al in­come tax.

Re­view in­come tax regime to al­le­vi­ate the over­all tax bur­den on more vul­ner­a­ble and low­er-in­come cit­i­zens;

* Re­duce cor­po­ra­tion tax.

Busi­ness­es will pay be­tween 18 and 20 per cent cor­po­rate tax rate. The cor­po­rate tax bur­den will be even low­er through tax ex­emp­tions for those firms that in­vest in Gov­ern­ment’s strate­gic projects;

* Sim­pli­fy the VAT regime

Re­move VAT on over 7,000 items (ex­emp­tions will be lim­it­ed to ne­ces­si­ties such as food, ed­u­ca­tion, and health), and, the VAT ze­ro-rat­ing will be lim­it­ed to di­rect ex­porters who ex­port goods.

A net VAT re­fund sys­tem will be es­tab­lished to elim­i­nate ar­rears of VAT pay­ments to busi­ness­es and pro­vide time­ly re­funds through a re­formed process and a strength­ened sys­tem.

* In­crease du­ty rates on non-es­sen­tial im­ports

To com­pen­sate for the re­moval of tax on in­come be­low $1 mil­lion, im­port du­ties will be raised. Cer­tain ba­sic food, med­i­cines and es­sen­tial items will be ex­empt from im­port du­ties to en­sure af­ford­abil­i­ty to the poor and most vul­ner­a­ble.

In terms of rais­ing rev­enue, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so pro­posed in her Oc­to­ber 2019 pre­sen­ta­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to scrap the com­mon prac­tice of treat­ing in­ter­est on the bonds of Cari­com coun­tries as tax ex­empt to en­sure Gov­ern­ment re­ceives its due share of tax­es. She said over $8 bil­lion in tax­es had been lost from this tax loop­hole.

She al­so took note of “the com­mon prac­tice of laun­der­ing tax­able prof­its via off­shore in­sti­tu­tions.” She said this prac­tice would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed and leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duced to bring clo­sure to such prac­tices.

“We can raise be­tween $4.5 bil­lion to $7.5 bil­lion in do­mes­tic rev­enues per year by im­prov­ing the ef­fi­cien­cy of the tax sys­tem and through these in­sti­tu­tion­al re­forms. No Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty need­ed,” she said, ac­cord­ing to the pre­pared text of the speech.

“With these ini­tia­tives, by 2025, we ex­pect to at­tain a bal­anced bud­get and sta­bilise pub­lic debt at 60 per cent of GDP.

Ques­tions:

1) Would the UNC plan plunge T&T in­to deep­er deficits which would dri­ve debt high­er?

2) Has the UNC quan­ti­fied the cost, in 2025 dol­lars, of not im­ple­ment­ing the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, scrap­ping the prop­er­ty tax, re­mov­ing 7,000 items from the VAT list, re­duc­ing per­son­al in­come tax, low­er­ing cor­po­rate tax­es from 30 per cent for all busi­ness­es earn­ing over $1 mil­lion to be­tween 18 and 20 per cent?

3) If when the cost of the tax pro­pos­als is quan­ti­fied, it is found that ‘the maths is not math­s­ing,’ mean­ing that what is giv­en away in tax cuts, can­not be re­trieved else­where in the econ­o­my, what would a UNC gov­ern­ment do?

4) If elect­ed, does the UNC in­tend to in­tro­duce all of these fis­cal mea­sures in the first bud­get?

5) Does the UNC still ex­pect that it can de­rive sub­stan­tial rev­enue by re­mov­ing the tax-ex­empt sta­tus of Cari­com bonds and at­tempt­ing to elim­i­nate trans­fer pric­ing?

Cost of liv­ing

It is clear that, if elect­ed, the UNC will make the cost of liv­ing in T&T a ma­jor is­sue.

In her Oc­to­ber 4, 2024 bud­get re­sponse, she chas­tised the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing, “Year af­ter year, they come with tax­es, fu­el price hikes, traf­fic tick­et fines, elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter rate in­creas­es while re­mov­ing grants for sin­gle moth­ers, ba­by milk grants, lap­tops for our chil­dren, GATE for our uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, and so on. House and land prices are out of reach for the av­er­age per­son. Rents will in­crease be­cause of prop­er­ty tax­es and in­creas­es in util­i­ties.”

At a Mon­day night meet­ing in Ch­agua­nas on Au­gust 26, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar out­lined the in­creas­es in the prices of fu­el and a list of 11 ba­sic food items. Both fu­el and the bas­ket of ba­sic food items in­creased dras­ti­cal­ly in the nine years the cur­rent Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment has been in gov­ern­ment, she ar­gued.

She read out the fol­low­ing list of fu­el price in­creas­es be­tween Au­gust 2015 and Au­gust 2024, which in­di­cat­ed that the price of the three main fu­els had in­creased by 34.78 per cent (pre­mi­um), 158 per cent (su­per) and 227 per cent (diesel).

She made the point that the in­crease in the price of fu­els over the last nine years has re­sult­ed in ris­ing trans­porta­tion costs, which have con­tributed to ris­ing food prices.

She said the bas­ket of ba­sic foods—com­pris­ing flour, rice, sug­ar, cur­ry, mar­garine, corned beef, full cream milk, sar­dines, pota­toes, gar­lic, onion—cost $109 in 2015. In Au­gust 2024, that bas­ket of goods cost $189, which is a 73 per cent in­crease.

Apart from the fact that she has not made any firm pro­pos­al to ad­dress fu­el and food prices, it must be ob­vi­ous to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar that all of T&T’s fu­els and all of the 11 items in her food bas­ket are im­port­ed (ex­cept for the lo­cal milk that Nes­tle pro­duces).

More ques­tions

* How does the UNC, if elect­ed to of­fice, in­tend to sta­b­lise the price of im­port­ed food items?

* Does the par­ty naive­ly ex­pect that if it low­ers cor­po­rate tax­es that the lo­cal busi­ness sec­tor would low­er its prof­it mar­gins?

* Would elim­i­nat­ing VAT on 7,000 items com­pen­sate for the pro­posed in­crease in im­port du­ties on “non-es­sen­tial items?”

* Is it the height of fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for an op­po­si­tion par­ty to be promis­ing tax re­duc­tions at a time of un­cer­tain nat­ur­al gas rev­enue, eight years of fis­cal deficits out of he last nine fis­cal pe­ri­ods and a slow-growth econ­o­my in which the de­mand for for­eign ex­change out­strips the sup­ply of itand which ra­tions for­eign ex­change?