JAMONOMICS

Image via Wikipedia

An IMF deal in the making, there had to be some changes. Yesterday night the Jamaican Minister of Finance announced a broadening of the Tax base to include items such as female sanitary napkins, sugar, corned beef and bread. The excuse is basically that they need more revenue o pay back there debt as well as run the government. At the same time the government has been undertaking a public sector cut programme that will identify and see the realization of possible savings in the government apparatus.

There is no denying that some amount of inequity has been reached. The tax exempted items had always been those that the poorest of society need to maintain some amount of decent living. The position of this government seems to be a more 'progressive' type of taxation which no doubt will be easier to collect and will almost definitely raise government revenue, but how will this affect the poor, and who's idea was this anyway?

Of course we need not look any further than Washington to realize where all of this is coming from. The IMF negotiations have been going on for well over 6 months, but not a word has been said about the conditions. Definitely, the broadening of the tax threshold to include the items most needed by the poor is as a result of IMF conditionality, and we certainly would not be getting any 1.2 billion dollars if it were not done. The government acts as though they have no idea what the IMF wants, however there is the Article IV Consultation reports that came out in June 2008, which outlines basically everything the IMF thinks the government should do. There is no hit and miss in these negotiations, we know what they want and Shaw is giving it to them.

So what did we expect? As long as Jamaicans continue to live in the cloud of ignorance as we currently do, these things will continue to occur and take us by surprise. The information is there, we must hold our government more accountable by equipping ourselves with knowledge.

O yeah, and all now there is no talk of how we plan to pay this money back.