The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Top food store operators yesterday said it “makes no sense” to pull retailers away from their businesses for last minute Value-Added Tax (VAT) discussions, interrupting the only season that delivers a profit for some.

Rupert Roberts, Super Value’s owner, and Philip Beneby, the Retail Grocers Association (RGA) president, told Tribune Business that numerous VAT-related issues remained “unsettled” with just eight days to go before implementation.

Agreeing with Bahamas Federation of Retailers co-chair, Etienne Christen, that the January 1 start-date was “bad” for their sector, Mr Roberts said he and his staff would be working for 24 hours - while Bahamians were enjoying Junkanoo - to ensure systems were VAT-ready.

The pair were speaking ahead of a meeting today between the Ministry of Finance/VAT Unit, headed by financial secretary John Rolle, and the private sector to go over all parties’ readiness for the new tax.

“They’re having a meeting tomorrow [today] to try and get ready, and are pulling merchants from their business on Christmas Eve,” Mr Roberts told Tribune Business.

“It doesn’t make any sense. The only time some merchants make a profit, they’re pulling them away from their businesses at Christmas time.”

The Super Value owner and president added that “there’s so many things unsettled with the Government”, that the private sector would use the meeting to try and determine its VAT position.

“Putting VAT in on January 1 is a bad time,” he told Tribune Business. “While they’re [government officials] at Watch Night services, praying for their sins, and going to Junkanoo to have a good time, we’ll be working for 24 hours to download VAT to 200 cash registers to prepare our stores for next morning.

“It [VAT start] should have been February 1, and it would even have been easier if it was January 2, giving us more time to do things properly.”

Mr Roberts also revealed that uncertainties remained in the retail industry over the practical application of VAT ‘inclusive’ pricing.

He explained: “It’s late for this not to be settled. We’re still not sure with this inclusive pricing. We’re going to do what we think we have to do, and hope it’s satisfactory and that we don’t have to go to jail.”

Messrs Roberts and Beneby bemoaned the fact that the Government seemed to have no further use for the retail industry and wider private sector, telling Tribune Business that after helping modify VAT and winning acceptance for the proposal, “they don’t need us”.

“We’re with them,” Mr Roberts said. “It’s our country. We want to pay the national debt. When the New Zealanders came in, we all worked together to make things work.

“We thought they [the Government] came to the same conclusion, and would stop playing politics and hold things together. We now can’t communicate with them apart from through the press.”

Mr Beneby added: “They are making decisions that are politically incorrect.”

Mr Roberts, meanwhile, also addressed concerns over egg prices, blaming recent increases on the Government’s decision to raise the duty rate to 30 per cent to protect local producers, combined with an import supply squeeze.

“The Government put 30 per cent duty on eggs to protect the eggs producers in Freeport,” Mr Roberts told Tribune Business.

“The first couple of weeks, we exhausted their supply. Eggs are expensive and scarce because of the freeze in the US, and the public is paying 30 per cent on high-priced eggs.

“Price control only allows us to mark eggs 10 per cent, which barely covers refrigeration to Leslie Miller [the Bahamas Electricity Corporation] and breakage.”