Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion MP Vas­ant Bharath says the Gov­ern­ment was forced to in­crease tax­es be­cause it was in re­ces­sion.

Con­tribut­ing to yes­ter­day's de­bate on the Pro­vi­sion­al Col­lec­tion of Tax­es Or­der in the Low­er House yes­ter­day, Bharath said the Gov­ern­ment had "wast­ed the wind­fall of an­oth­er boom–this time the gas boom.

"The mon­ey done and the on­ly place to (now) go and get it from those peo­ple (tax­pay­ers) out there...That's what has hap­pened."

He said the T&T econ­o­my was bank­rupt and "we're now mort­gag­ing our chil­dren's fu­ture to pay for this gov­ern­ment's fi­nan­cial in­dis­cre­tion."

He added that the da­ta show that the coun­try was in re­ces­sion:

n Man­u­fac­tur­ing down by ten per cent.

n Re­tail sales down by sev­en per cent.

n House prices down by sev­en per cent.

n New mo­tor ve­hi­cle sales down by 40 per cent.

Bharath said in­stead of re­spond­ing to this cri­sis in a ma­ture and re­spon­si­ble way, the Gov­ern­ment de­cid­ed to tax the pop­u­la­tion.

He added that de­spite the re­ces­sion, the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ued its wild spend­ing.

Bharath added that for the first time in 17 years, the econ­o­my was ex­pect­ed to con­tract.

"All of this tax­ing on in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions is be­cause of their reck­less fi­nan­cial dis­ci­pline," he added.

He said T&T was cur­rent­ly pay­ing $4 bil­lion worth in in­ter­est on its debt. Bharath said the in­creased tax­es on al­co­hol and cig­a­rette would ad­verse­ly af­fect the pen­sion­ers and oth­er el­der­ly peo­ple in the coun­try.

He said mon­ey from those peo­ple should not be tak­en away and they should be al­lowed to spend in on what­ev­er they want­ed. RL