There is nothing sinister – Prof. Prasad

Deputy Prime Minister says he is disappointed that the Opposition still thinks there is some kind of conspiracy or some sinister motive with giving water bottling companies 7 years of corporate tax holiday while FijiFirst MP Premila Kumar says the country is losing revenue.

In his right of reply following the debate on 12 budget consequential Bills, Professor Prasad says some outside the parliament say that just because the Prime Minister met the owners, then there is something.

He says the submission made to the Ministry of Finance was from the industry as a whole.

Professor Prasad says the Opposition figures are wrong.

While responding to claims by Kumar that the extraction from the top tier was increased from 3.5 million litres to 10 million litres, Professor Prasad has clarified that it was always 10 million litres.

He says there is absolutely no revenue loss for the government and what they have done is going to get them more revenue and from $80 million that is collected now, it could increase to up to $100 million by 2024/2025.

Professor Prasad says they are getting just about $5 million from corporate tax from water bottling companies and then they are increasing the water resource tax from 18 cents to 19.5 cents which will actually increase the revenue that the government will earn.

He says the water resource tax is what gets the revenue.

The Deputy Prime Minister says the Opposition were saying that this is a high spending budget but in the last two days they were moving motions to increase the budget and when he added that, it comes to more than $150 million increase that they wanted in the last 2 days.

He says the expenditure would have increased from $4.4 to $4.5 billion and that is their voodoo economics.

He further says they are saying to increase the social responsibility tax because the government reduced the tax from the rich.

He says that was a bad policy brought by the previous government to target certain groups.

He says it targets those who were earning more than $280,000 who would get less take home pay than the person getting $220,000 or $230,000.

Professor Prasad says FijiFirst MP Jone Usamate understands what social responsibility tax was doing and he has corrected it.

FijiFirst MP Premila Kumar says water bottling companies are getting away in two ways where none of these companies will pay 25 percent corporate tax and increase in threshold of water extraction from 3.5 million litres per month to 10 million litres per month.

She says companies extracting up to 3.5 million litres per month that paid 1 cent per litre will pay nothing and bigger companies like Fiji Water owned by billionaires who paid 18 cents per liter for water extracted over 3.5 million litres will pay 19.5 cents per litre if they extract more than 10 million per month.

Kumar says this is further revenue lost due to change in threshold and then pay no corporate tax.

She says the arguments presented by the Prime Minister were not sound or valid.

FijiFirst MP Jone Usamate says they are reducing income tax for the highest paid people in the country and increasing the cost of goods.

He says this is pro-rich and anti-poor.

Usamate says some of the companies who are going to pay 25 percent corporate tax are going to die.

He adds they employ thousands of people.

Meanwhile, the 2023-2024 National Budget consequential Bills have been passed.