Should the PPP/C be returned to government, it will reverse a number of decisions made by the current administration, including the Value Added Tax (VAT) being placed on some food items and medical supplies and the hike in rental fees for farmers by the Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary-Agriculture Development Authority (MMA-ADA), opposition leader Bharrat Jagdeo said on Thursday.
Jagdeo told a press conference that the city’s controversial parking meter project would also face scrutiny and his party would be willing to disapprove of it and face the legal implications. “If or when the PPP is returned to office it is going to remove the VAT from all the items that are now VAT. We will reverse all the changes made to the mining regimes, the taxation for miners will go back to what was there before,” he said. “Any corrupt transaction that takes place in the sugar industry we will reverse those…” He added that there are lots of other things that would be changed.
Jagdeo said the PPP/C had managed the economy and it was “going well, one of the fastest growing economies in this hemisphere and anywhere in the world.”
He said all of the new measures introduced under the APNU+AFC government were killing prospects for the country and did not make economic sense.
As it relates to the mining sector, Jagdeo said that new tax measures would harm the sector irreparably.
Jagdeo said he hoped President David Granger would meet with the miners since they were not exaggerating that the measures passed in the budget could “kill the industry.”
The Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) has written to the President requesting a meeting and has threatened to hold a mass protest should the meeting not materialise and if their concerns were not addressed.
Jagdeo pointed out that VAT was introduced on heavy-duty machines which immediately sent up the cost of excavators and other such equipment used in the sector and more taxes were added in the last budget which include VAT on interior travel. In relation to the interior travel tax, Jagdeo said that the government’s plan not to tax tickets of hinterland residents was not catered for in the law and called for the tax to be removed completely. “The miners use that service and that will drive up their costs…,” he said.
Meanwhile, as it relates to the parking meters, Jagdeo said his party believes that “it is a corrupt deal…for minimal investment these people are going to take the hog’s share of the revenue.”
He said that “anything that is not done above board” will be reversed by his party.
“If the government approves it, the government, whatever government it is, can disapprove [it] and then there would be legal consequences and stuff like that but we would have to go through that,” the opposition leader said, when asked specifically if he would scrap the parking meter project should his party be returned to government.
“We would not allow this city to die, these people seem to want to kill Georgetown… First we heard they were cleaning up the city and their only way of cleaning it is chase away the people, so we don’t make any mess at all,” he said.
He added that the PPP/C is opposed to the parking meter project and that the government should take responsibility because it “supports it and it approved it.”
