KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the Gov­ern­ment pro­ject­ed An­gos­tu­ra will lose near­ly $60 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly due to its fail­ure to im­ple­ment the full tax on its rum.

He added that the ac­tu­al in­crease in rum prices should have been $60 fol­low­ing the tax ad­just­ment, but prices rose by on­ly $46, rais­ing ques­tions about what hap­pened to the re­main­ing $14.

“And it will come. That is a pub­licly trad­ed com­pa­ny. It is on the stock ex­change. You think the share­hold­ers tak­ing that? They will make (Gary) Hunt raise that up to $170. You wait and see. Now what Gov­ern­ment does some­thing like that? When the min­is­ter an­nounced that, they all banged the ta­ble. They said when UNC wins, every­body wins, so drinkers win, or­di­nary peo­ple win,” Im­bert said.

He was ad­dress­ing sup­port­ers at the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) Post-Bud­get meet­ing at the Bel­mont Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre on Fri­day. Im­bert said a Fri­day night drink was some peo­ple’s on­ly form of re­lax­ation af­ter a hard week’s work. He added that the Gov­ern­ment, af­ter five months in of­fice, still could not get it right. He crit­i­cised the bud­get’s late pre­sen­ta­tion and sug­gest­ed that the ad­min­is­tra­tion might try to pro­long the par­lia­men­tary de­bate in­to the ear­ly morn­ing hours to muf­fle PNM MPs’ con­tri­bu­tions, as he claimed hap­pened in 2010.

But he added, “They will still get thun­der.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Leader Pene­lope Beck­les-Robin­son ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of re­ly­ing on “fluff and mar­ket­ing” in the bud­get.

Turn­ing to tax­es, she said the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed land­lord sur­charge was sim­ply an­oth­er form of prop­er­ty tax. She ex­plained that even a pen­sion­er rent­ing part of their home to sup­ple­ment their in­come would feel the bur­den.

“Re­mem­ber what Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told you all. She made the point that no gov­ern­ment should be tax­ing and tax­ing and tax­ing. She said that when they go in­to gov­ern­ment, that is no more tax. Ah lie? She lie. They come in­to of­fice now, and it is on­ly tax and tax and tax and tax.”

Beck­les-Robin­son said many cit­i­zens be­lieved the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) when it promised no prop­er­ty tax and vot­ed for them on that ba­sis. Yet with­in a week, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo said prop­er­ty own­ers would get back their re­bate, and Per­sad-Bisses­sar lat­er de­nied mak­ing that state­ment.

She de­fend­ed the PNM’s prop­er­ty tax pol­i­cy, say­ing that un­der lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, the rev­enue would have gone di­rect­ly to mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions.