On Tuesday, July 15th, the House of Assembly met to consider a motion for an amendment regulation on the Goods and Service Tax (GST) for food items.
An exemption of the tax on all food items was agreed by Executive Council under the former APM administration in December of 2024, but this exemption was never ratified for legislation as zero-rated GST on food. In addition, an amendment was made to exempt specified public entertainment activities from GST.
Premier Cora Richardson-Hodge had been announcing recently that preparations are in progress for the implementation of the AUF’s GST Relief Plan which was devised since August of last year. It is the Government’s intent to initiate this Relief Plan by August 1st 2025. The plan calls for eliminating a series of four tax centres, namely the wholesale, retail, restaurants and manufacturing sectors.
And while the details of the GST Relief Plan won’t be officially presented to the House before next Tuesday, Former Premier and Leader of the Opposition, Dr. Ellis L. Webster, took advantage of the opportunity in Tuesday’s sitting of the House to criticize the Government for its pending GST Relief Plan which will, in effect, reduce Government’s revenues.
In essence, Dr. Webster accused the UK Government of allowing the AUF administration to do what it wants and preventing Anguilla from being financially independent. He also argued that the AUF Relief Plan will put the social, educational and health programmes of Anguilla at risk, and said that the plan would cause Anguilla to regress.
“This proposal of a GST repeal and replace will be economically counter-productive. The GST was implemented in order to get aid for COVID relief,” Dr. Webster stated.” Now, it just seems like the United Kingdom Government is allowing the Anguilla United Front administration to [do] what it wants to do.”
“The Anguilla United Front is an organization which does not have good prudent management of the public purse. It is known that whenever the Anguilla United Front is in Government, there are deficits, depletion of reserves and increased debt. So now, it would seem like the United Kingdom Government, through the office of Her Excellency the Governor, prefers Anguilla to be financially dependent and needing to beg for help when there is a natural disaster, or a need of any kind,” the Opposition Leader noted.
“What is of concern here,” he said, “as stated by the current Honourable Premier and Minister of Finance, is that the implementation of its GST Relief Plan will create a reduction in revenues. It has been stated that there would be a loss of 21% or some EC$48 Million reduction in revenues.”
Dr. Webster said that it is of concern to him that certain social programmes will be affected by this 21% cut – programmes like Senior Shield, Junior Shield, and dialysis care.
But in a passionate response, the Hon. Minister of Social Development and Education, Shellya Rogers-Webster, accused Dr. Webster of fear mongering with the people of Anguilla.
“Our administration has no intention to cut back on programmes such as Senior Shield, Junior Shield or free dialysis,” she insisted. “It has been our campaign promise not to do that, but to actually improve on them.”
She emphasized that currently Government is undertaking an evaluation exercise to see how all those programmes can be improved and eventually legislated, since they are so important for the people of Anguilla.
“So it is important that our people are not to be fear mongered into believing that when we offer them the GST Relief it would deprive them of health and other benefits,” she said.
The Hon. Premier Cora Richardson-Hodge also stood to condemn the Opposition Leader for the failure of his APM cabinet to introduce the GST exemption on food in December 2024, saying that it was done in such an improper manner. She accused him of being in a “rush” to adopt part of the AUF’s GST Relief Plan.
“Today, we find ourselves as an administration coming and addressing this GST exemption on food that was ‘rushed’ and done so quickly, just so the APM would say they were doing something, when, in fact, it had not been properly done…”
She observed that there would be people out there, who are not supporters of the current administration, who would be asking her government: ‘You said you were going to give us GST Relief as soon as you get into office, so where is the relief? Well, this administration believes that if you want something done you have to do it properly instead of rushing back trying to jimmy-fix this and that.”
She charged the former APM administration for having to come to the House ever so often to make adjustments to the GST regime, saying that such adjustments had to be made every now and then because the APM government failed to implement the GST the right way in the first place.
