Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Vas­ant Bharath have warned Gov­ern­ment against im­ple­ment­ing the prop­er­ty tax in to­day’s 20201 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion. And for­mer PNM Pub­lic Util­i­ties min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte is al­so look­ing at what PNM col­leagu­ue Colm Im­bert will present in the Bud­get to­day to put more mon­ey in­to the hands of work­ing peo­ple.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Im­bert re­cent­ly said the prop­er­ty tax won’t be post­poned.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in a so­cial me­dia post last Fri­day, re­called that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in 20o9 while in Op­po­si­tion, had ar­gued ve­he­ment­ly that peo­ple were not in a po­si­tion to af­ford the prop­er­ty tax.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked, “To­day, fol­low­ing five years of PNM mis­man­age­ment, com­pound­ed by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the peo­ple are at a much worse po­si­tion than they were in 2009. As Row­ley then said, ‘Stop tak­ing your own ad­vice that no one is an­noyed with the tax!’ The Gov­ern­ment has been ir­re­spon­si­ble with the na­tion’s fi­nances for the past five years and now ex­pect the peo­ple to bail them out once again?!”

She again ap­pealed, “Re­mem­ber your words prime min­is­ter, re­mem­ber peo­ple are strug­gling. Have a heart and hold on im­ple­ment­ing the prop­er­ty tax on an al­ready bat­tered pop­u­la­tion!”

Af­ter Im­bert speaks to­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar will con­tin­ue Bud­get de­bate on Fri­day.

Yes­ter­day, Bharath es­ti­mat­ed prop­er­ty tax rev­enue may be about $300 mil­lion and col­lec­tion would fur­ther squeeze cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es who’ve al­ready seen sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in rev­enue.

“This tax at this time won’t in­crease eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, which is what’s need­ed, it will slow it down. Gov­ern­ment should be seek­ing ways to in­crease eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty,” Bharath said.

He rec­om­mend­ed Gov­ern­ment halt col­lec­tion of cor­po­rate tax, in­come tax and VAT for six months to give peo­ple and busi­ness­es a chance to re­cu­per­ate, pay debts or hire peo­ple and this would gen­er­ate eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Af­ter this pe­ri­od, col­lec­tion can restart.

Mean­while, Le Hunte, who re­signed as a min­is­ter in Ju­ly, said peo­ple will want to see sig­nals in the Bud­get that T&T was be­ing put back to­geth­er af­ter the year’s prob­lems. He said he was wait­ing to see how Im­bert would damp­en de­mand for lux­u­ry items, whether by tax or li­cens­ing mech­a­nism.

“I al­so feel he needs mech­a­nisms to put more mon­ey in the hands of work­ing peo­ple,”

Le Hunte said.