By McPherse Thompson, Assistant News Editor.JPG)
Patterson
PRIME MINISTER P.J. Patterson has signalled the Government's intention to facilitate integration of the informal economy into the official sector as a way of ensuring a more orderly and equitable business environment.
"We believe that there are some things that we have to do to help provide business development assistance for the informal sector," he said.
Those measures include business support in the form of "one stop shops" where all information, payables and assistance can be handled. In addition, he said, "we want to help to provide training in basic business skills, business and tax law, accounting, marketing, forecasting and planning; how to prepare and submit statutory returns and where and how to accept financing on the most attractive terms."
He was speaking at the post-Cabinet retreat at Jamaica House on Monday, against the background of a recent study which concluded that the informal economy represented 43.5 per cent of the island's measured Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The study, conducted and released last December by Group of Analysis for Development (GRADE), an internationally renowned research body, has placed the dollar value of the informal economy at $155.9 billion. For the purpose of the study, the researchers divided up the informal sector into three categories - pure tax evasion, the irregular economy which covers the production of legal goods and services as well as untaxed operations, and illegal activities.
According to Mr. Patterson, the findings of the study supported "what everyone had long suspected, that the economy is much larger than official data would suggest."
In that regard, he said it was important to recognise that "this has to be brought within the calculation of the GDP in order to authenticate the true size of the economy."
Mr. Patterson said the Government wished to integrate the systems "as fully as we can. We want to facilitate the growth of the small informal operations into larger entities that are capable of employing more persons. All of this will make for a more orderly and more equitable business environment."
