ANY OBJECTIVE OBSERVER could not help but be slightly quizzical, rueful or upset about last week’s published $49 million owed by Government to the private sector.
As may be expected, Government replied to the Barbados Private Sector Association’s (BPSA) facts with facts of its own, which showed that the private sector owed more than ten times the amount – some $600 million – published last week in what is likely to be an excuse to send home more Barbadian workers – wasn’t 97 enough for the start of a new year? – and simultaneously embarrass the Government on the eve of the next general election.
What was also timely, though, was economist Professor Michael Howard’s indirect reply to the issue when he suggested over the weekend that Government, whether it’s the current administration or the Barbados Labour Party, must stop offering tax breaks to companies and impose stiff penalties on those which habitually withhold crucial funds from the Government.
It’s good that some balance is being brought to a situation that smacks of hypocrisy and is innately driven by a political agenda.
In adding my two cents’ worth of balance, I only need to go back to around the middle of last year when Parliament passed an amendment to the Customs Act. That controversial piece of legislation not only sought to make directors of companies liable for the ubiquitous bounced cheques that had become a hallmark of local commercial life, but it was also revealed during the debate that Government was owed $192 million in Value Added Tax (VAT) when the current administration took office in January 2008.
Imagine the sum owed now five years on! Up to the time of the Customs (Amendment) Bill 2012, numerous business owners and directors had for years hidden behind the corporate veil and deliberately evaded payment of duties and taxes to the Customs Department. Furthermore, many of them had then gone on to open new companies, shamelessly doing further business with the Government and cheating the Crown day and night of millions of dollars.
Did no one believe that such valuable dollars would be so sorely needed at some point?
Hence the need to place, via the amended Customs legislation, liability not only on companies and corporations which can be dissolved in a twinkling of an eye, but on individual directors, so as to prevent the continued leakage of some of the taxes and duties which basically are the sine qua non of any government’s existence.
Can anyone imagine what Barbados could do today with $192 million? For sure, some CLICO policyholders would be happy, maybe Four Seasons Resort would resume construction again, and Al Barrack’s smile would become broader.
So, at the risk of sounding pious, does the BPSA have any moral authority to hold Government by the virtual short hairs for $49 million? As Holy Writ recommends, this organization needs to remove the beam from its own eye in order to be able to see the speck in brother Government’s eye.
And this is not to say that the BPSA is not comprised of some honest and upstanding businessmen; nor do I believe for one moment that the average entrepreneur wakes up one morning and issues a bounced cheque because he or she feels like it. Many business people fell upon hard times, even before the current global recession.
And while I keenly recall the current administration being described as “rapacious” when the Customs Amendment Bill was introduced, I cannot help but wonder what the current behaviour by the private sector smacks of now, or whether this is all part of what is expected to be a nasty and bruising election in 2013.
I also recall that no organization – the media, the blogs, not even the Barbados Government Information Service – went out there and published the names of those defunct private sector companies that owed millions in VAT and other duties. No one sought to embarrass the private sector then or now; since we’re supposed to be a team of public and private sectors and the labour unions, working hand in hand in a much revered Social Partnership to build Barbados, where we all have to live, move and have our being long after the next general election is over.
Furthermore, the $49 million debt will certainly not disappear with the wave of a magic wand if there is a change of Government in the next few weeks.
May today, Errol Barrow Day, truly help Barbadians, particularly the selfish, to see that we’re all in this together.
• Ricky Jordan is an Associate Editor of THE NATION. Email [email protected]
