Coalition’s policies brought tremendous hardship to the poor

The APNU+AFC’s style of governance killed economic growth, stifled productivity and stymied commerce and trade, resulting in not only a contraction of the economy, but making it almost reliant solely on taxation as the only source of revenue.
This is according to Legal Affairs Minister and Attorney-General, Anil Nandlall, during his speech on Tuesday in the National Assembly on the second reading of the Income Tax Amendment Bill 2020.

Nandlall explained that the style of governance practiced by the APNU+AFC saw vast reduction on exports, no foreign exchange, joblessness; reduction on imports because of a lack of money flowing in the economy and less revenue in customs and import taxes.
In the process, the legal affairs minister said 30,000 persons lost their jobs, “Barama closed operations, Bai Shan Lin was chased out of the country, GuySuCo shut down, no markets for rice and I can go on.”
He said the APNU+AFC government’s approach to job creation and the productive sector can easily be gleamed from statements made by the then President, David Granger.

“He says government is not in the business of creating jobs. He told the rice farmers at this very venue at a meeting of farmers and millers that rice is not the government’s business. Carl Greenidge labelled the sugar industry ‘a black hole’. The then President told our young university graduates to go to Stabroek Market and sell cook up rice, plantain chip and fried fish. That is their style of governance,” the Attorney-General said.

Meanwhile, he said the increase in non-taxable mortgage relief saves the homeowner between $5M to $7.5M, depending on the particulars of their loan and on average about 50 per cent of monthly mortgage payment is to service the interest of a loan.
This Income Tax Amendment Bill, he said, seeks to restore the limit back to $30M as another stimulus to the economy to complement the housing drive which will deliver over 50,000 new house lots and houses over the next five years.

With this increase, he said the homeowner can save as much as $7.5M throughout the course of the loan.
In 2013, the Legal Affairs Minister said the PPP/C, for the first time, introduced interest relief for mortgages for homeowners up to a ceiling of $30M.
He explained that this measure was clearly intended to boost not only the National Housing Drive, but most importantly, to assist especially first-time home owners to own their own homes.

RAPID DEVELOPMENT
“It was during this period that we witnessed a phenomenal proliferation of new homes in areas such as Diamond, Eccles, Providence, Grove, Farm, on the East Bank of Demerara; Wisrock and Amelia Ward in Region 10; La Parfaite Harmonie, Cornelia Ida, Stewartville, Meten-Meer-Zorg and Tuschen in Region Three; Bath Settlement and Experiment in Region Five; Hampshire, Tain and Williamsburg in Region Six,” he said.

Although such a policy was so beneficial, Nandlall said the APNU+AFC administration found it problematic and reduced that $30M mortgage limit to $15M.

This measure, Nandlall said, was among over 200 other measures implemented by the APNU+AFC while in government. They imposed new taxes and increased licensing fees, so as to tax “the daylight out of our people”.
In fact, he said many people described the tax measures as the most punitive, ever imposed, by any government in the English-speaking Caribbean since Independence in one election term.

“The people were bound to vote them out in the end. It is necessary therefore, to examine the type of ideology that will produce such draconian measures. It is an ideology that sees taxation as the only source of revenue to finance government,” the Attorney-General said.

He continued: “It’s a style of government that offers no incentive to the productive sectors, no incentives to attract investments, no incentives to augment trade, no policy to create jobs and the shutting down of industries that are encountering problems rather than nurse those industries back to good health.”
He explained that over the past five years, instead of the APNU+AFC developing house lots for Guyanese, they chose to “drive a nail in the coffin of an intended homeowner by taking away from them an interest relief measure, if they were to obtain a mortgage to buy or build a house. We are not only delivering that house lot or that house but we are restoring that measure.”

The $7.5M in savings, he said, can be used to furnish the house or to educate the children and much more.
Further, the Legal Affairs Minister said there is yet another dimension where another sector of the economy will benefit; it is the banking sector as loans and mortgages will become far more attractive than they currently are.

“Those who interact with this sector will tell you how badly this sector needs a boost as a result of the horrible performance of the economy over the past five years. The banks now carry a burden of about forty per cent 40 per cent of their loans are non-performing and can be considered bad loans,” he said.