PM: NO NEED FOR TAXI FARE HIKES

Prime Minister Patrick Manning said yesterday that some sections of the national community were capitalising on the increase in gas prices and “scapegoating” it to impose higher than necessary increases in certain areas. Speaking at a post-Cabinet news conference, Manning said Government was noting that the increases in taxi fares in some parts of the country bore no relation to the increases in the price of gas. He said the Ministry of Legal and Consumer Affairs proposed to become very active in this area to ensure that the public was not taken advantage of. He said Government could use “moral suasion” — “just as we did with the chicken prices”— to drive these prices back down. Told that chicken prices were going back up, Manning said Government would use whatever muscle it had. Stating that the increase in the price of gas was not that high, Manning said its impact on food items and other goods was not as significant as people (who wanted to raise their prices) were making it out to be.

He stressed that consumers had to understand that they too had power and that they could refuse to purchase those items where they feel that the prices are unduly high. Told that the net effect of the Budget on people who were neither old nor disabled was that they would be negatively affected, Manning said this Budget had to be seen in tandem with last year’s which gave many tax and other benefits to a wide range of persons. On the question of why Government imposed harsh “sin” taxes on casino-type gambling and not on other types of gambling (lotto, play whe, horse-racing), Manning said  things like horse-racing were traditional forms of recreation in Trinidad and Tobago and were therefore more “morally acceptable” to the society at large.