NASSAU, Bahamas — Bahamas Chamber of Commerce and Employers’ Confederation (BCCEC) CEO Edison Sumner said yesterday that the government should have never based its revenue plan for this fiscal year so heavily on taxes collected from gaming houses, and asserted that if the budget is revisited as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Peter Turnquest said would happen, the government must consult the private sector on how to dig itself out of the financial mess it’s in.
“These are things we talked about before and we brought this to the attention of the government before, that they cannot be putting all of their eggs in one basket and there has to be some diversification of how you raise your taxes and it cannot be contingent on just trying to raise money from the gaming industry,” Sumner said when asked by Guardian Business about the deputy prime minister’s comments that government will have to recast the budget to account for the delay in tax collection from the gaming industry. https://thenassauguardian.com/2018/09/06/chamber-ceo-if-budget-is-revisited-fully-consult-private-sector/
