And almost a year ago, entertainment stakeholders like Ascenthium, Musa Shaheed, and River of Fire marched up the steps of the National Assembly to voice their concerns about the new trade licensing bill. In its initial draft, struggling artists and musicians would see extra money taken out of their pockets and felt that there needed to be more consultation. The same would go for small vendors like your everyday juice seller or panades shop.
But today, Minister Requena explained that those smaller businesses won't have to worry about being taxed.
Oscar Requena, Minister of Rural Transformation, Labor
"What I want to say is that we have made significant progress with that bill. As you are aware, I had presented that bill last year for the first reading and then it went to House Committee Meetings and we had several stakeholders voicing their concerns, there were concerns particularly particularly from the artists community, the DJs and so on and we're a government that listens, people have genuine concerns, we have to sit down, we have to listen, there were several meetings in which they had an opportunity to sit down and voice their concerns to dialogue, and I can say to you that that bill has gone through significant cleaning up. It is at a point where the bill has now been taken back to House Committee and really I was informed that the House Committee was very much pleased, both government and opposition, with some of the changes that were made to the bill and we are now getting ready to take the bill back to the House and we are hoping that once it goes through the House, we are then going to announce when it is going to be implemented. This is a very important bill both for the urban and rural areas and I want to make it significantly clear that no rural community or no rural business establishment should be worried that we are going to taxing the small little business. We're not looking at a trade license for the small tacos, the small pandas shop, the small little meat shop, we have a clear category that we're looking at, the business establishments must be greater than or equal than 600 square feet in terms of their business operation area, what we call the productive space, before they are considered for a trade license."
