P.U.P. takes government to task on windfall taxes

Prime Minister Dean Barrow had his say yesterday in respect of the windfall tax reached with B.N.E. and other oil companies. And today, the opposition, P.U.P., had its own take on the petroleum tax agreements. The P.U.P. takes issue with the delay in reaching the tax proposals which it claims has led to losses to government of between four to five million dollars. And according to the opposition, the windfall tax should be triggered after the oil companies achieve a pre-determined rate of return rather than by the price per barrel of oil and furthermore that the threshold of ninety dollars per barrel announced by the government is unreasonably high. In its press release, the P.U.P. chastises government for ignoring the Petroleum Fund and for the timing of the announcement coming within days of the budget presentation which projected ten million in the windfall tax and within hours the government announces it hopes to yield eighteen million dollars. P.M. Barrow announced yesterday that government had concluded the agreement with B.N.E. which seeks a fifty-fifty split in oil revenues of over ninety dollars per barrel in the case of B.N.E. and a sliding scale of between fifteen to fifty percent for other companies not yet producing oil.