200,000-Strong Business Group Wants Shaw To ‘Come Clean

The 200,000-strong Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise (MSME) Alliance says Finance Minister Audley Shaw should “come clean” and apol­o­gise for giv­ing the coun­try the impres­sion he was not aware the mon­ey col­lect­ed from a spe­cial tax on fuel was placed in the Consolidated Fund instead of being set aside in a spe­cial fund.

Yesterday’s Sunday Gleaner report­ed from Hansard — the offi­cial ver­ba­tim records of Parliament — that Shaw was last year giv­en infor­ma­tion on what was being done with the mon­ey the Andrew Holness admin­is­tra­tion sub­se­quent­ly promised would be used to help finance an income tax break for Jamaicans earn­ing $1.5 mil­lion or less. Donovan Wignal, pres­i­dent of the alliance, said he would not go as far as to say Shaw was mis­lead­ing the coun­try last week when he made the rev­e­la­tions that the mon­ey had been spent or oth­er­wise bud­get­ed. He agreed, how­ev­er, that Shaw should not have been sur­prised giv­en the update he received in Parliament last September. “There is some amount of dam­age con­trol that needs to be done now,” Wignal toldThe Gleaner. “What the peo­ple are look­ing for is hon­esty. Do not come with any excus­es. (But) I would­n’t come out and say the coun­try was being misled.”

He added: “At the end of the day, they (JLP) con­sult­ed with their con­sul­tants. They (were) not in pow­er, but of course they would have been privy to a lot of the dis­cus­sions that would have tak­en place. He (Shaw) should come clean. Shaw should come and pro­vide a ful­some expla­na­tion as to what he meant when he said what he said based on the fact Hansard has proven that he knew some­thing con­trary to what he announced.”

GARNER RESPECT

The MSME Alliance head said Shaw’s com­ing pub­lic to speak to the issue would “gar­ner some amount of respect”. “Do the big man thing. Do the ‘Man a Yard’ (thing) and say ‘I mis­spoke’.” Confronted with Shaw’s claims, for­mer Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips had rub­bished them as “red her­rings”, argu­ing that the sit­u­a­tion high­light­ed the “imprac­ti­cal­i­ty” of the tax plan. Phillips told The Gleaner that, up to when he left office last month, leg­is­la­tion was not com­plet­ed for the estab­lish­ment of the spe­cial fund, the Energy Stabilisation Fund. He also said approx­i­mate­ly $3 bil­lion from the spe­cial con­sump­tion tax col­lect­ed on fuel was used to finance an insur­ance pro­gramme for oil last July. The Holness admin­is­tra­tion had hoped to get $9.5 bil­lion from the gas tax to fund the income tax pol­i­cy. The Office of the Prime Minister has indi­cat­ed that the issue will be “addressed in the pre­sen­ta­tion of the Budget” lat­er this month.  http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​l​e​a​d​-​s​t​o​r​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​4​0​4​/​2​0​0​0​0​0​-​s​t​r​o​n​g​-​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​-​g​r​o​u​p​-​w​a​n​t​s​-​s​h​a​w​-​c​o​m​e​-​c​l​ean200,000-Strong Business Group Wants Shaw To ‘Come Clean’