Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment, Kennedy Swarats­ingh, says no men­tion was made about the dis­burse­ment of fund col­lect­ed via prop­er­ty tax. In­stead, he said in­for­ma­tion was giv­en about the pay­ment count and pay­ments re­ceived for each cor­po­ra­tion.

His re­sponse fol­lows state­ments by the chair­man of the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Josi­ah Austin, that his cor­po­ra­tion has yet to re­ceive any funds from the tax al­lo­ca­tion.

Yes­ter­day, the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion al­so is­sued a state­ment on its Face­book page say­ing no funds were re­leased to it from the prop­er­ty tax al­lo­ca­tion.

On Fri­day in the Sen­ate, Swarats­ingh out­lined the statu­to­ry process for man­ag­ing the tax rev­enue, say­ing that the mon­ey col­lect­ed from prop­er­ty tax is first de­posit­ed in­to au­tho­rised com­mer­cial bank ac­counts be­fore be­ing trans­ferred to the Ex­che­quer ac­count at the Cen­tral Bank, in ac­cor­dance with leg­is­la­tion and Trea­sury pro­to­cols.

He ex­plained that the to­tal sum of prop­er­ty tax col­lect­ed as of May 2025 was $135.5 mil­lion, with funds dis­trib­uted to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, the largest pay­ment of $23.2 mil­lion go­ing to the Tu­na­puna/Pi­ar­co Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion.

The min­is­ter al­so stat­ed that $16,926,756.31 was al­lo­cat­ed for the Diego Mar­tin Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Min­is­ter Swarats­ingh clar­i­fied the in­for­ma­tion he gave. He al­so ad­vised Austin to re­vis­it the Sen­ate record­ing, not­ing that no men­tion was made about the dis­burse­ment of funds.

“It was nev­er about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of funds but al­ways about the col­lec­tion of funds.”

On Sat­ur­day, Austin, who de­fend­ed the prop­er­ty tax as be­ing a just and eq­ui­table tax when fair­ly as­sessed and trans­par­ent­ly ad­min­is­tered, called on the Gov­ern­ment to im­me­di­ate­ly dis­burse all prop­er­ty tax funds al­ready col­lect­ed to the cor­po­ra­tions where they were sourced.

“Even more trou­bling is the fact that the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment has ef­fec­tive­ly abol­ished the prop­er­ty tax regime, fail­ing to of­fer any cred­i­ble al­ter­na­tive fi­nanc­ing arrange­ment for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies. In­stead, we have seen a trou­bling pat­tern of vac­il­la­tion, swing­ing be­tween the idea of re­fund­ing tax­pay­ers and promis­es to dis­burse col­lect­ed funds to cor­po­ra­tions. This in­de­ci­sion has re­sult­ed in a sit­u­a­tion where cit­i­zens who paid their tax­es in good faith are now sub­si­dis­ing those who did not, with no clar­i­ty on how or if those funds will ever be put to use for the ben­e­fit of the com­mu­ni­ties from which they came,” he said.

Yes­ter­day, the Diego Mar­tin cor­po­ra­tion said it con­tin­ues to op­er­ate with­in the con­straints of its al­lo­cat­ed an­nu­al bud­get and has not re­ceived any mon­ey from prop­er­ty tax.

When the UNC came in­to of­fice, it said it would do away with the tax, which was be­ing done un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion.