The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Well the Camelot celebrations are all over…$’000’s spent on hats…wonder how much Tax arrears the 1000 chosen owed the Treasury had enough to embellish themselves but.....

Gone Ivan Johnson of The Punch fame and especially the Grapevine….many sleep easier now... then we hear Gorman Bannister passed a lot more gave a sigh of relief, wonder who inherited Gorman’s father’s black book?

Oh, Columbus – shame or rejoicing? For sure you can’t change history so the destruction of a material statue means nothing are you going to censor all the books written about Columbus?

Methinks if you read his memoirs he was most happy if not totally thrilled when his look-out shouted ‘land-a-ho!’ as the crew was close to mutiny....was it actually Cat Island or San Sal?

Real things now — Central Bank tries hard to reassure no default, but rarely tells the truth by 2024 we have an exposure of $1.23 billion to find...Reserves are borrowed money — post Moody’s rating is our interest rate now over 10% the last stretched 8.95%. Thank God tourism seems to be developing well, but there are still 25,000 still unemployed....can we afford extending the $150.00 a week allowances? What will those 25,000 do to survive?

Promises? How stupid some politicians are... you know your bank account is overdrawn and you promise... Pension increased by how much $5.00 a month – S10.00 per month? NIB is empty contributions on the high end will have to increase appreciably to replenish and I don’t mean by a small amount.

VAT? The FNM remember increased it to 12% and included exemptions on 80% of bread baskets which are what joe average buys weekly... the effect was the low wage people continued to hit/purchase 80% of bread basket items losing VAT millions, but the higher wage sector increased their buys and not bread basket items which actually increased VAT receipts but that was pre-COVID 2019.

Most pundits question can VAT be lowered without adjustments to exemptions? You know we excel in double dipping...concede VAT-Duty and to that travel exemptions and hope revenue will increase.

Motor vehicle licensing... Minnis told us all you don’t need to do so 2019–2021 many ‘00’s didn’t, but now it is in the 3rd year... Let’s speculate 130,000 didn’t licence at least $120.00 per vehicle – that’s some $15.6 million da people got to find... Minnis, of course, would simply say.....we forget that! Camelot we certainly don’t have some hard and harsh fiscal decisions will have to be made...false promises like from the visiting Black Hotel group — heard their promises under Christie much fanfare then and guess what....they didn’t even purchase a Time-share! Please get real they came to enjoy themselves.

TOM K SMITH

Nassau,

October 11, 2021.