Dear Editor,
The Government seems to be lazily fumbling along while the country’s finances are in a major crisis. $60 million deficit in the first four months of this fiscal year averages out to a revenue short fall of $15 million a month. If this trend continues; by June 2003 our projected revenue will come up short by $180 million; add this to the already $186 million deficit provided for in the budget the country will be saddled with another fiscal year deficit of $366 million which will have to be borrowed. The PLP’s first year of Governance seems to be headed for trouble and I don’t see them doing anything in an effort to avert this impending disaster.
The amendment to the departure tax act now being debated in Parliament is foolishness. If I were Perry Christie, Minister of Finance, I would simply have tourism make arrangements to collect the departure tax from every departing passenger at every port of entry in the country and deposit funds into the treasury on a daily basis. Mr. Christie alluded to a loss of revenue from departure tax of some $10 million per year, but I have news for him, the loss is far more than that, I’ll give an example. The Customs Department in Freeport did a check of one particular airline’s records sometime ago, and compared them with the passenger manifest they provided to Customs for a six month period, and with the co-operation of the US Immigration Department’s records for the airline departures for the six month period discovered that the airline staff had short paid Customs by $660,000. They were stealing the departure tax and they continue to steal today.
This amendment will not correct the misappropriation of funds, but will make matters worse. The amendment as I understand it, will provide for travel agents and airlines all over the world to collect our departure and ticket taxes. Can you imagine the accounting problems? The Government needs to rethink its position. It’s a tourism tax, let tourism collect it.
Yours etc.,
Forester J. Carroll
A Letter To The Editor
