Mangala claims agri tax relief useless
Parliamentarian and former Finance and Mass Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera stated that the appointed Minister of Finance has announced a package of tax exemptions for the agriculture sector which however, have little or no real impact on the sector.
Issuing a Media release yesterday (26), he said: ‘Most small-scale farmers do not fall into the bracket of income tax payers. Data over the last few years shows that revenue collected from all agriculture-based income taxes, accounts for approximately 0.03% of the total Government tax revenue – this is a negligible figure and suggests that the removal of this will not have a material impact on the agriculture sector and the productivity thereof.’
The release further states, ‘the proposed tax breaks will not address any of these critical issues in agriculture, it will however, benefit the large plantation companies and commercial agricultural players, who could afford to pay taxe sanyway. Therefore, in effect the agriculture relief package provides a tax break for corporates but provides no benefit to the small farmer.
“What about support for the other small-scale industries – Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) carpenters, retailers, manufacturers, the construction sector, and fisheries? Do they not deserve tax relief? The tax package also includes measures to reduce taxes for agricultural processing which will benefit large-scale, highly profitable rice millers. As per what is proposed by the purported Ministry, large plantation companies and profitable multinationals in the agriculture sector will not pay any taxes, whereas a local construction companies would pay 28% tax. This is an unfair proposal.”
(Source: Ceylon Today)
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That is good news for Samaraweera! Good for you and your Ranil. So, the vast majority of the small farmers will not cast their votes for Mahinda Rajapaksha’s party in the forth coming general election. The big corporate players who are going to benefit from the tax relief announced by the MR, going to vote you any way since you are the capitalist back licking party.
So why worry? Why complain? Hunky dory! You are going to get the votes and Ranil will be the PM and you will get your post back! Be happy!
probabaly the only thing that samaraweera know about agriculture is eat rice. to conceive what it is all about he need to exmine the structure of arable farming and those involved in arable farming with special reference to paddy. The import para meters to be considered are the size of holding and ownership. To answer this quaestion the government ought to run a meaningful survey to determine the contribution agriculture makes to the GDP
the govern should match this amount to agriculture by way of fertiliser subsidies and offer a guranteed price that would meet the cost of production.
The cost of these should compensated by taxing the conxumer and the millers
Back in the 60s the main objective in agriculture was to achieve self suffieciency and this was nothing more than a mirage, hwoever there some gains and paddy production reach record levels in the 80s unfortunately this was nver sustained becuase of bad policies to agriculture