“VAT waived as trade-off – Fitzgerald explains why govt. gave CCA tax exemption” – The Nassau Guardian

Excerpt from this article; “What was initially presented to the Bahamian people as a ‘gift/ex gratia’ payment to the thousands of former Baha Mar employees and unsecured creditors, was in fact a trade off for value added-added tax (VAT) concessions for the development’s general contractor, China Construction America, Minister of Education Jerome Fitzgerald revealed yesterday amid heightened public scrutiny surrounding details of the sealed arrangement.

‘What I want to make clear first off all is that with regard to concessions for Baha Mar project, those concessions were negotiated by the prior administration,’ Fitzgerald told ZNS at the Office of the Prime Minister.’

‘We honored all of those for the new owner and for China Construction [America].”

As for the concessions that were negotiated by the prior administration, what off them, Mr. Fitzgerald and how do they affect the ‘secret’ arrangement that this government has made with the Chinese?  Where in any concession negotiated under the prior administration was there a ‘gift’ that came at the price of $100 million in value-added tax concessions?  I ask because we the people are having grave difficulty with this part of the deal that the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) government has struck with the Chinese, or rather with what they [this government] told us the people whom they represent the deal was at the time, “James Smith, the former state minister for finance who heads the Claims Committee, said these statements are made to empathize that payouts are being made on an ex-grata basis, meaning outside any formal court-supervised liquidation process because the money is a gift from the Export-Import Bank of China (CEXIM).” – The Tribune 12 September, 2016

So now the Minister has a lot of explaining to do about the VAT exemptions, because these clearly could not be terms negotiated under the former administration, as the country had not been introduced to VAT at the time.

“With regard to Value-Added Tax, I think the issue arose because the completion part of the project, which was a really small amount just to complete the project, the request was made to whether or not value-added tax would be charged or collected with regard to that.

‘At the end of the day when we calculated the amount for that, because you don’t pay VAT on labour, you’re not paying VAT on the imports, the only part with regard to services, as it’s really minuscule as far as we were concerned.”

So $100 million is considered “minuscule” to this government, now you get an idea of why we have been down-graded four times since they have been the government.  Beside the fact that over a billion dollars in VAT has been collected from the hard working people of the country and is basically unaccounted for, the minister and his government feels that it is ‘okay’ to give away an extra $100 million in VAT concessions because it is so ‘minuscule’ in the whole scheme of things that we can just forgo it from the public purse, I can only ask just how many other times have they taken this position when making decisions concerning the finances of the country? 

There are some that will agree with the government’s action in granting $100 million in value-added tax concessions to the Chinese to have Baha Mar completed and opened, stating the benefits far out weight any draw backs; this while a working family is considering which bill to pay tonight; medical, mortgage, food, utilities because the stress of VAT have them at the point where they cannot afford all and have already had to pull their children out of private schools.  The funny thing about it all is that if the government had been up front with the public and not misled them then we may not even be having this conversation right now, because a lot of this has come about because the people feel betrayed yet again but this Progressive Liberal Party government.

The Progressive Liberal Party fails for one reason, it is their nature.

END