If you tuned into last night's episode of Uncut on Channel 7, you would have seen Prime Minister John Briceno and our Jules Vasquez in an extended, no-holds-barred discussion on a number of urgent topics of national interest.
For about 1 hour and 44 minutes, the PM took on some of the toughest questions since his party took over government 7 months ago. Tonight, we have a few excerpts from that very heated debate. Here's the Prime Minister's disclosure that the government's tax revenues are starting to show signs of moderate recovery from the devastating effects of the COVID pandemic:
Hon. John Briceno - Prime Minister
"The taxes are increase — are improving. For instance, this past month, for the month of May, we collected, I think it's under 400 thousand dollars less — no, this May, we collected more than what we collected in 2019, when the budget was — by about 400 thousand dollars, yes."
Jules Vasquez
"So, that exceeds pre-COVID numbers."
Hon. John Briceno
"Pre-COVID numbers, yes. Now, the GST has to catch up yet. That hasn't caught up, but the economy is picking up much faster than anybody anticipated. For the last 3 quarters of the UDP Government, during COVID, which started in April, that first quarter, the deficit was 23.3%. Then, the next quarter was 13.2%, and the last quarter under the UDP was 13.1% at the end of December. Now, in our first quarter, the estimates that we're getting - it's not official yet, that we're going to have a deficit of 8.4%. So, we moving very quickly into growth. All indications are that by the second quarter of this year, we are going to be in positive growth."
