In a speech that lasted almost 1hr 45 min but consisted of 95% of what he had said at his West Bay meeting last week, Premier, Hon. McKeeva Bush, was once more at the helm of his ship desperately trying to steer it into calmer waters.

The public meeting held at The Mary Miller Hall, Red Bay, finally got underway at around 7:45pm, originally scheduled for 7:30pm on Monday (6), but postponed to Wednesday because of bad weather.  The purpose of the meeting was to explain the new measures to be introduced to the budget to replace the expat income tax Community enhancement fee.

What we learnt was very much what we had heard before. A bash at the previous PPM’s government for getting us into this mess complete with a repeat slide-show presentation to reinforce this (“Government has done a sterling job in these times”), the PPM leader Alden McLaughlin always bashing Bush on the CNS website, Governor dictates how many civil servants are employed so he cannot cut the 500 -700 jobs some of the private sector wants (Ezzard Miller also came in for some scathing with his plan to cut the Civil Service), the Police helicopter (might be a security issue so UK might not allow its scrapping), along with all the previously announced budget proposals but now excluding the expat income tax.

We then had an impassioned plea how it wasn’t fair government, because of the Bill of Rights, had to allocate over a million dollars for the rights of prisoners to have preferential medical treatment and a QC to represent them for shooting and killing innocent children.

After an hour of this and people starting to leave someone shouted out when the premier was going to speak on the new budget proposals.  He said, curtly, he would in his time as he had to cover the groundwork and he couldn’t stop them leaving if they wanted.

Finally, after more repeats, he got to the alternative measures and he praised the business group for their initiative.  The measures he outlined are:

1. Work permit fee increases in certain categories. Those costing under $1,000 per year – no change. Then a range of increases from 5% for $2,000 permits up to 35% increase on those costing $15,000 per year. This will bring in revenues of $7.8M.  Financial Controllers, Real Estate Brokers, Managing Directors, Accountants and Chief Executive Officers will take the burden of the increases.
2. Departure tax increase $10 per person
3. Stamp duty on certain insurance purchases ($1.2M expected revenues)
4.  Master Hedge Fund Registration increases ($2.3M expected revenue)
5. Real estate changes 7.5% increase for both Caymanian and Non Caymanian but first time Caymanian buyers will continue to enjoy stamp duty concessions
6. Fees on commercial boats over 30 ft.
7. Increases on annual registration fee payable by exempted limited partnership ($9M expected revenue)

Aggregate revenues from proposal by the business group – $44M  for 10 months ($53M for one year) .

Fee on cigarettes, beer cans and beer bottles.

A much more comprehensive list and report will be in Friday’s iNews Cayman.

The meeting closed with a cry to everyone to work together and he asked the PPM to put any proposals for getting us out of debt in writing to him first.