The Government should provide the evidence

Dec 17, 2022 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

Kaieteur News – The Opposition has opted for a narrative about discrimination and marginalization and the establishment of an apartheid state. This is a not a new narrative; the Opposition has pursued this angle during the 23 years it was in Opposition, and it had brought them little rewards.

If anything this claims about ethnic discrimination strengthens the hand of the Government. The more the Opposition cries racism and ethnic discrimination, the stronger the PPP/C becomes because it drives insecurity into the hearts of their supporters and makes them huddle under the ruling party.

The resort of this old and tired narrative reflects the failure of the Opposition to provide effective criticisms of the Government. And this is surprising because there are numerous issues upon which the Opposition can challenge the Government.

Part of the coyness of the Opposition to confront the PPP/C on its governance record has to do with the fear of counter criticisms of the APNU+AFC. The PPP/C has solid evidence of APNU+AFC mismanagement and excesses and it constantly throws this in the face of the Opposition which is unable to defend its five years in office between 2015 and 2020.

But still there are areas on which the PPP/C can be challenged to produce the evidence of maladministration which they level against the APNU+AFC. Take for example the PPP/C’s claim that the APNU+AFC imposed some 200 taxes on citizens.

The APNU +AFC should have long challenged the PPP/C to produce the evidence of 200 taxes imposed on citizens. What does the PPP/C mean by this? Was it 200 items on which taxes were imposed or was it 200 new taxes?

Some of what the PPP/C may be claiming as taxes is really increases in certain fees which were increased. Some of these fees were so abysmally low that they needed to be increased. You cannot really deem some of these licensing charges as taxes. If for example you go to get a copy of a document and it used to cost $10 and the APNU+AFC increased that to $100, then that cannot be deemed a tax and surely even the new cost is not an economic cost.

The Opposition therefore should call on the Government to list these 200 taxes and show from what to what they were increased. The public is entitled to see the evidence of these 200 taxes.

The public is also entitled to see the evidence that by removing these taxes, the Government has saved households tens of billions of dollars. This is wild claim because even if you remove a charge or a tax, it does not necessarily mean that the consumer saves.

Since the PPP/C came into office, prices of both imported and locally produced consumer items have skyrocketed. So even if the Government took off a tax on an item, it does not mean that this translates to a savings for consumers since many items have seen a steep increase in prices. As such, the consumers may have saved from the removal of the taxes, but certainly this savings, if any at all, has not been overridden by the steep increases in prices. It is therefore disingenuous for the PPP/C to be announcing how many billions in disposable incomes consumers have enjoyed since its return to office.

Secondly, the PPP/C’s math about what the removal of the tax has done should be challenged. The PPPC should produce the evidence that the removal of the taxes would have led to savings of the billions of dollars which are claimed.

But even if this is so theoretically, it may not be so practically. We have a Private Sector which does not have the best of reputations. There is no guarantee that reductions in taxes actually filter down to the consumer. The Government should provide the proof that this is being done since it is counter-productive for the Government to be reducing taxes on consumer items but these reductions are not filtering down to the consumer.

There needs to be an independent Consumer Agency forced to conduct surveillance of prices of consumer items. The agency should gather information on the monthly or quarterly movement of prices, especially when there tax reductions announced so that an assessment can be made as to whether consumers are benefiting from the removal of the taxes.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)