By Phyllis Thomas, News Editor 
THE PULSE of last week's news veered between the war in Iraq and the domestic economy the increase in light bills which Jamaica Public Service Company customers will have to pay and later, the Budget.
The country was told that the Budget for the 2003/2004 financial year is $261.4 billion and that 65 per cent of it will go towards servicing the country's debt.
With the tabling of the Budget came more warning from the Government of difficult times ahead, but I think that to state the situation in those terms does not begin to describe Jamaica's calamity. I say Jamaica is in deep do... And the worst part is that I see neither the commitment nor the determination to take ourselves out of it. I deliberately refrained from suggesting that we need someone to throw us a lifeline because the connotation there is alms stretching out our hands to get. For that is a nasty habit that we have cultivated, that has helped to propel us into this mess.
Apart from that, I will never forget that this Government's irresponsible use of public funds, during the election campaign last year, became a further dead weight on the economy, pushing it further into a dilemma and ensuring it stays there.
I guess the patriotic, sensible and life-saving thing to do is to move on, see how we can lift the country out of the dilemma for our sake and that of our children. And some people might even advise that it makes no sense trying to saw saw-dust, hence raising issues that have landed us in trouble should be dropped. Sure we can't saw saw-dust. But we cannot and must not forget these situations or allow those who engineered them to forget. We do so at our own peril. Then we would only feed their arrogance and encourage their contemptuous behaviour.
As a matter of fact, it is precisely because of our children and our country that we must ensure that they remember. That will be the surest protection against a recurrence of the massive waste and squandering that takes place in Government.
That said, how do we finance the 2003/2004 Budget? The Star quoted unnamed sources last week as saying that the General Consumption Tax and income tax will be significantly increased. If that is so I think that is going to be one hell of a bullet to bite. However, I think that there are two other options that are open to us as well, which are nothing new because one of them is an annual promise made without being able to carry it out and the other simply stares the Government in the face.
The country had been advocating for weeks that Government and Opposition members of Parliament voluntarily roll back the pay increases they had awarded themselves, or cut the percentage.
This is a perfect time to demonstrate to Jamaicans the passion they feel for this country. They should not wait on the Clarke committee to make such a recommendation. Their action or lack of it will speak in volumes. History will record the type of decision they made at a time when the country was in a crisis virtually at the brink of collapse, when they themselves had been predicting extremely difficult times ahead. If they are not prepared to lead by example they would have been telling the country that it is all right to push the rest of us to make the sacrifices and to exempt themselves from it. And let's face it, even if the parliamentarians' salaries are rolled back some of them won't even miss it not with the heavy-duty allowances that they are pocketing. Many of us who are being asked to make the sacrifice don't even begin to get that kind of money as gross annually salary. We will see our horrible living conditions drop further. We will struggle to buy basic food, medicine and educate our families but we will be asked to do it nevertheless.
So when the Budget Debate is opened on April 15, do not feed us with any more platitudinous speeches. We are in no mood for that. The only thing that we will be prepared to accept is the Government making the same kind of sacrifice they will be asking us to make.
The next option before us is making the country's tax collection machinery effective. Right now they are anything but effective, although effectiveness and efficiency in tax collection had become a staple in Budget debates. We are told annually about the serious efforts that will be made to bring more people into the tax net and eliminate the large amount of arrears. But every year, also, we are told of the hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes that were not collected in customs, GCT, income tax and property tax.
We have had reports which quote Mike Surridge, Director of the Revenue Protection Division, as saying that the country loses more than $2 billion in revenue each year from uncollected taxes from formal business entities and that was in customs fees alone. He said the situation was cause for concern and pointed to the "cascading effect" of not getting in the customs fees as taxes like GCT and income taxes are also affected.
The GCT was introduced on October 22, 1991, bringing in $3 billion from 15,600 registered taxpayers in the first year of its operation. More than 10 years later there are businesses which remain outside of that collection system.
In May 2001 the Senate approved amendments to the General Consumption Tax Act, which paved the way for the forced registration of persons who continue to evade the tax net. But they continue to evade it.
The Government must show us convincingly how it is going to collect the taxes and how it is going to implement effectively the rules that are in place to ensure compliance.
If we are not able to find ways to strengthen our economy then we will continue to be beggars and people like Otto Reich, presidential envoy to the Western Hemisphere will continue to dis us and order us around. For taking a principled position against the war in Iraq we are being told to shut up or face the consequences. And we are also being accused of biting the hands that feed us. Some persons are getting jumpy over these idiotic threats because they are fully aware of our weak economy and equally weak Government.
