Opposition Leader Mia Mottley
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Wednesday June 17, 2015 – Opposition Leader Mia Mottley yesterday declared that the Budget delivered by Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler was nothing short of torture for Barbadians and the current administration was not fit to lead.
In her rebuttal to the presentation Sinckler delivered on Monday evening, Mottley said it outlined no strategy to encourage growth, no initiatives to create new jobs, no relief for the most vulnerable, and Barbadians were being punished by the Freundel Stuart administration’s own failure to “get it right”.
She said the imposition of BDS$200 million (US$100 million) in taxes on citizens comes at a time when “people are not in a state to accommodate any further extraction from their pockets” and was done “with a spirit of callousness”.
“This minister . . . asked you to pay more to eat, this minister asked you to pay more to drink milk and to drink juice. This minister asked you to pay more to live in your house,” the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) leader said, referring to the removal of some foodstuff from the basket of goods exempt from Value Added Tax (VAT), the new cess on milk and milk substitutes, a tax on sweetened beverages, and increased land tax rates.
Crying shame on Sinckler for forcing those covered by the Profession, Trade and Business Registration Act to produce a valid tax clearance certificate in order to renew their licences and therefore do business, Mottley continued: “This minister glories in the fact that if anybody owes any back taxes they will not be allowed to work in Barbados to pay off any back taxes in the absence of a tax clearance certificate.”
She added that while the minister was patting himself on the back for what he claimed were improvements in the economy, his other hand was “deep in your pocket taking out money by stealth”.
For example, she said, while income tax rates had been reduced, several tax deduction categories had been removed.
Mottley also criticized the new land tax structure which will rope in people who were exempt from paying land tax for the last four years.