Preliminary figures up to the end of February indicate that while the government’s revenue is some $50 million ahead of last year’s numbers so far, revenue collection continues to trail “a little behind” what had been anticipated up to this point in the 2004/2005 fiscal year.
Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Finance Michael Halkitis made that disclosure to the Bahama Journal this week, at which time he further revealed that it would take an additional $18 million to meet the government’s target figure.
According to Mr. Halkitis, so far the government has collected an estimated $663 million for the current fiscal period, but is pressed to collect another $400 million between now and the end of June to meet the $1.52 billion it hopes to secure.
Mr. Halkitis has stressed that the shortfall can be directly attributed to revenue collection being slightly behind in a number of key government agencies like the Customs Department, which accounts for approximately 60 percent of all revenue.
Other areas lagging behind include the collection of real property and tourism taxes, he said.
“Collecting real property taxes is something that we continue to work on. We are hopeful that we can accelerate the revaluation process as part of a number of initiatives that are going on like the study being financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for proper land planning, which once completed would also assist us in this area,” Mr. Halkitis explained.
“This will assist the department in maintaining its inventory of properties in The Bahamas so that they would have a better indication of the state of the properties, which would help in valuing the properties and as the properties are valued upward, then more tax become due.”
Mr. Halkitis pointed out that there is another positive side to the government’s efforts to collect all the revenue it can, like the expectation that tourism taxes would increase as The Bahamas continues to welcome hundreds of spring breakers.
There is also good news regarding the collection of stamp taxes, which have performed better than the government expected up to this point, he said.
The government has implemented an ongoing programme in the Customs Department to heighten its collection efforts by identifying potentials for leakages, a process Mr. Halkitis claimed has already began reaping results.
“The Department is always encouraging its officers to be vigilant to ensure that they collect what is due, but we should not discount the fact that last year’s hurricanes would have tremendously impacted workers within the tourism industry who may have traveled during the holiday season, bringing back goods that attract a high level of customs to the extent that some of these persons were laid off and some had their work week reduced. And this would have certainly impacted on their spending power,” the Parliamentary Secretary explained.
He noted though that the news on the revenue front is encouraging.
“No one likes to be behind schedule, but given the storms, we are actually moving in a positive direction and we can see this coming off of last year,” Mr. Halkitis said.
“And as we look forward to another year or two we expect to continue a positive trend so even if we end up having a shortfall from what we anticipated, we look forward to the next year being even better and being able to make that upﾅAnd so I am very optimistic heading further into March, considering that there are a lot of construction projects going on.”
He said there is still the possibility of the government collecting another $400 million before the end of June.
“March has always been the month we have forecasted to reap the highest amount of revenue, especially from the Road Traffic Department and going down to the end of the year, our experience has been that a high number is also collected in April and May,” Mr. Halkitis said.
By Macushla N. Pinder, Bahamas Journal
