Published:Thursday | March 19, 2015 | 5:22 PMDaraine Luton
Opposition Leader Andrew Holness, yesterday, said the Government was harassing taxpayers in the business community under the guise of doing compliance activities.Some $12.3 billion has been targeted for collection by way of compliance measures to...
Published:Tuesday | March 17, 2015 | 5:49 PMDaraine Luton
The Jamaican Government is being urged to consider developing a regime to facilitate the export of labour. Audley Shaw, the opposition spokesman on finance, in contributing to the Budget Debate in the House of Representatives yesterday, said the...
Published:Thursday | March 12, 2015 | 12:00 AMDaraine Luton
The Jamaican Government has taken the decision to hedge against an increase in the price of petroleum on the world market and is to impose a $7 per litre tax on petrol to pay for the mechanism, which finance minister Dr Peter Phillips has likened to...
Published:Wednesday | March 11, 2015 | 3:16 PMDaraine Luton
Amid a high prevalence of breast, cervical and prostate cancers in Jamaica, major medical stakeholders have suggested the State should put policies in place which would result in more persons being screened.Dr Mathew Taylor, an obstetrician and...
Published:Wednesday | March 11, 2015 | 5:33 PMDaraine Luton
With the Ministry of Finance forecasting that it will collect $10.4 billion from the implementation of new revenue measures in the 2015-2016 fiscal year, William Mahfood, president of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ), says the...
Published:Tuesday | March 10, 2015 | 3:08 PMDaraine Luton
The St Joseph's Hospital property in East Kingston is to be the site of a new home of the Ministry of Health. Dr Fenton Ferguson, health minister, said while his staff are now scattered in various locations because of them leaving the Oceana building...
Published:Monday | March 9, 2015 | 8:15 AMDaraine Luton
Work is well under way to renovate the old Jamintel building in downtown Kingston, with some $370 million allocated for the project in this year's Estimates of Expenditure. The Transport Authority purchased the building for $250 million from the...
Published:Wednesday | March 4, 2015 | 5:31 PMDaraine Luton
Highway 2000 will not be extending into Williamsfield anytime soon. Dr Omar Davies, the minister of transport, works and housing, said on Wednesday that the developers of the highway have decided it would not make economic sense to build out the road...
Published:Thursday | March 5, 2015 | 3:57 PMDaraine Luton
Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips said the failure of the previous government to make the Jamaican dollar more competitive through negatively impacted the possibility of earning more from non-traditional crops such as cassava. The parliamentary...
Published:Sunday | March 8, 2015 | 3:43 PMDaraine Luton
So, the Government has pushed back, by a year, the target of reducing the wage bill to nine per cent of GDP (gross domestic product).This target, originally set for March 2016, was considered sacrosanct in the Government's agreement with the...
Published:Saturday | March 7, 2015 | 2:25 PMDaraine Luton
Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips said there is need for stakeholders to engage in a serious debate on the business model of sporting venues, which have been relying heavily on the State to support their operations."There is a whole question that...
Published:Tuesday | March 3, 2015 | 2:25 PMDaraine Luton
It appears that public sector workers will not get anywhere close to the 30 per cent increase in wages, over two years, they have requested."In the context of low inflation, in the context of the payment of increments, we are certainly expecting...
Published:Tuesday | March 3, 2015 | 7:35 PMDaraine Luton
Natalie Neita-Headley, the minister with responsibility for sports, said it is unlikely that Jamaica will ever have the vast number of positive drug-test results that were returned in recent years.Speaking in Parliament yesterday, Neita-Headley said...
It was not quite the call for divine intervention, but a Government Member of Parliament today made it clear, through prayers, that Jamaica requires the guiding hands of Almighty.
Jamaica is seeking the permission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to extend by one year, the target of reducing the public sector wage bill. The country had agreed with the IMF that the wage bill would be lowered to nine per cent of GDP by...
Published:Monday | March 2, 2015 | 5:05 PMDaraine Luton
Jamaica is to be darkness-free by 2017. Well, almost free of darkness, according to Phillip Paulwell, the energy minister who says the Government is prepared to use solar energy to power houses in remote rural areas that are not currently connected...
Published:Friday | February 27, 2015 | 1:22 PMDaraine Luton
Dr Dayton Campbell, the member of parliament for North West St Ann, has welcomed a $1 billion allocation in the Estimates of Expenditure, which he said will go a far way in improving the lives of residents in Belle Air and Mount Edgecombe.Some 100...
Published:Thursday | February 26, 2015 | 2:38 PMDaraine Luton
Legend has it that after the Morant Bay Rebellion in 1865, Queen Victoria, in anger, broke her pen and uttered the words "those rebels, let them suffer".Now, 150 years on, as...
Published:Friday | February 20, 2015 | 3:00 PMDaraine Luton
With one of its two major helicopters out of service, the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) said it is being severely hampered in its ability to carry out medevac and casevac operations.Medevac refers to the evacuation of military or other casualties to...
Published:Tuesday | February 17, 2015 | 11:28 AMDaraine Luton
The Jamaica Fire Brigade (JFB) is to get a 302 per cent increase in allocation for the acquisition of fire vehicles, even though the $362.9 million proposed in this year's Budget is far below the $539 million it requested. A total of $90 million was...
Published:Thursday | February 19, 2015 | 12:00 AMDaraine Luton
Three years after Raymond Pryce brought a motion to the House of Representatives calling for the Throne Speech to be renamed, the symbol of the British empire still stands like a man in the halls of Parliament.Yesterday, at the start of the 2015-...
Published:Thursday | February 19, 2015 | 12:00 AMDaraine Luton
Recurrent tax revenues are projected to jump by$24.2 billion in the next fiscal year, with the Government indicating it will be seeking to collect $402 billion in taxation to fund its $641.6 billion expenditure package, which was tabled in...
Published:Tuesday | February 17, 2015 | 2:28 PMDaraine Luton
For the first time in the modern history of Jamaica, the Estimates of Revenue is to be tabled along with the Estimates of Expenditure.This will be done in the House of Representatives today when Finance Minister Dr Peter Phillips lays the documents...
Published:Wednesday | February 18, 2015 | 1:40 PMDaraine Luton
With the 2015-2016 Budget being presented today at the ceremonial opening of Parliament, Financial Secretary Devon Rowe revealed the Budget will continue to focus on growth."Given the limited fiscal envelope that we have,...
Published:Tuesday | February 17, 2015 | 12:00 AMDaraine Luton
Describing the ruling of the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) that it refund customers more than J$973 million that it unilaterally imposed as foreign-exchange adjustments on fuel as "an assault" on the Jamaica Public Service Company Limited.
