DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

An op­po­si­tion-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tion is rais­ing con­cerns over the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to re­duce prop­er­ty tax.

Cou­va/Tabaquite/Tal­paro Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion (CT­TRC) Chair­man Ryan Ram­per­sad com­ment­ed in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

He was re­spond­ing to Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s an­nounce­ment that res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty tax would be re­duced from three per cent to two per cent of the an­nu­al rental val­ue. Im­bert dis­closed the changes when he tabled the Prop­er­ty Tax Amend­ment Act 2024 in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day.

Ram­per­sad said while the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) does not sup­port the tax, the cor­po­ra­tion had made plans for the monies that were ex­pect­ed to be gen­er­at­ed.

“We were pro­ject­ed to get ap­prox­i­mate­ly $41 mil­lion in prop­er­ty tax­es. In our al­lo­ca­tion for this fis­cal year, there was a line where prop­er­ty tax was in­clud­ed as a means of rev­enue and with that re­duc­tion, it would be to an av­er­age of $28 mil­lion.” This means a $13 mil­lion fall in ex­pect­ed rev­enue.

He said sev­er­al projects will suf­fer as a re­sult in­clud­ing a land­slip pre­ven­tion pro­gramme, and the pur­chase of two ex­ca­va­tors, as well as oth­er heavy equip­ment to de­silt wa­ter­cours­es to pre­vent flood­ing in the re­gion.

“The in­sta­bil­i­ty in terms of what they are do­ing is bad­ly af­fect­ing us be­cause we can’t plan. As politi­cians, it makes it even worse for us. When we project the year ahead and we make promis­es to burgess­es when we have pub­lic meet­ings and com­mu­ni­ty meet­ings, we try to fore­cast what it is we can do in the year ahead and when we can­not de­liv­er be­cause of these changes, it re­al­ly puts a strain on us.”

With a mid-year re­view around the cor­ner, Ram­per­sad said this an­nounce­ment has now rail­road­ed plans to fi­nalise the CT­TRC’s draft es­ti­mate to­mor­row. He added that he re­mains scep­ti­cal about col­lect­ing any rev­enue from the tax, as over the last sev­en years the cor­po­ra­tion has pro­gres­sive­ly got­ten de­creas­es in fund­ing de­spite gov­ern­ment an­nounce­ments of in­creas­es.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the op­po­si­tion’s shad­ow Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, MP for St Au­gus­tine Khadi­jah Ameen, has re­it­er­at­ed the par­ty’s po­si­tion that it does not sup­port prop­er­ty tax. She said Im­bert’s pro­posed tax re­duc­tion ac­knowl­edges that as well.

She ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of at­tempt­ing to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion from its fail­ure to set up the in­fra­struc­ture nec­es­sary for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the tax.

“While the law re­quires the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion to col­lect tax­es, they do not have those mech­a­nisms in place, they do not have the sys­tem for peo­ple mak­ing ap­peals–the ob­jec­tion is sup­posed to go to a tri­bunal that has not been es­tab­lished and that is sup­posed to be ap­point­ed by the pres­i­dent.”

She al­so said there has been a sys­tem­at­ic un­der­min­ing of lo­cal gov­ern­ment as Gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions con­tin­ue to be slashed.

Mean­while, for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, Vas­ant Bharath, record­ed a mes­sage which he shared to so­cial crit­i­cis­ing the prop­er­ty tax.

Bharath said the tax was be­ing used to sup­ple­ment failed eco­nom­ic poli­cies and warned that it should not be im­posed un­less the Gov­ern­ment re­duces crime, home­less­ness, child abuse, is­sues in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, job loss­es, flood­ing, the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and pot­holes.

No re­sponse from Al-Rawi

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi but he did not re­spond up to the time of pub­li­ca­tion.