Finance and the Public Service Minister, Hon. Audley Shaw, says no new taxes will be included in the 2018/19 Estimates of Expenditure He says revenue inflows have been doing “fairly well” this year, noting that the out-turn at the end of December 2017 was $13 billion ahead of projections. “Happily, with this trajectory, it is not the Government’s plan to...

A Special Early Retirement Programme (SERP) is being offered by the Government of Jamaica to eligible public sector workers.  Eligible public sector workers are permanent employees of the Government of Jamaica between the ages of 50 and 59 years except health professionals, security forces, correctional officers and teachers. The SERP operates under specified terms, including: It is the employee’s choice...

The National Water Commission (NWC) is reminding landowners that, by law, water supply debts are tied to the land and remain due and payable to the NWC regardless of who may have used the water and caused the debt to be incurred. Corporate Public Relations Manager at the NWC, Charles Buchanan, told JIS News that the agency is about to...

The Revenue Appeals Division (RAD) in the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service has shortlisted 156 cases for conclusion under its two-year Appeals Backlog Elimination Project, which commenced on June 1, 2017. Deputy Commissioner of the RAD, Andrea Kelly, tells JIS News that the matters are among some 330 backlogged cases spanning several tax categories for sums ranging from...

Twenty Jamaicans will benefit from the Caribbean Climate Innovation Centre’s (CCIC) J$18.7-million (US$149,000) entrepreneurial mentorship programme, which is providing assistance to over 200 persons across the region. The programme, which is funded by the Caribbean Development Bank, will commence in Barbados in 2018 with 28 heads of supporting organisations participating in a ‘train the trainers’ session to facilitate the initiative’s...

For the 2016/17 fiscal year, the Micro Investment Development Agency (MIDA), through microfinance organisations (MFOs), disbursed a total of $143.58 million to finance 1,396 microenterprises. The figures have been included in the MIDA 2016/17 annual report, which was tabled in the House of Representatives recently. Through a revolving pool of resources generated primarily from the Government of Jamaica/Government of the...

The Consumer Affairs Commission (CAC) is encouraging the public to utilise the information in the commercial bank survey, which was published on Friday, December 8. The survey, which uncovered the rates and fees charged by the seven commercial banks operating in Jamaica as at August 2017, was done between July and September 2017. Jamaicans can access the information at the...