For an eighth consecutive budget, the Jamaican Government has not imposed any new taxes on the populace.

This is also the sixth-straight budget cycle where the Government has reduced tax rates.

Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke boasted about this at the end of a more than four-hour long budget presentation in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, during which he talked up the Government’s successes and announced several new programmes to stir economic growth.

He was delivering the opening presentation of the 2023/24 Budget Debate under the theme "Preserving, increasing and sharing the gains of economic recovery".

“This is all under the Andrew Holness Administration, lest anybody mistakes that,” Clarke boasted.

He made the now customary statement of no new taxes to sustained applause from his Government colleagues.

“We have done so because we’re committed to not only preserving our economic recovery but to increase it, and more importantly to share the gains with the people of Jamaica.

“We’re being very clinical by finding those nuisance areas where the tax yield is very low but the frustration is very high, where we earn little from the taxes but we stymie economic activity and we are fixing those areas,” Clarke said.

“We believe in Jamaica, we believe and support the people of Jamaica. We’re firmly committed to providing the economic environment and resources necessary to ensure that the people of Jamaica grow and prosper,” he added.

“As we experience gain from economic reform and economic recovery, this Government has shown that we continue to share those gains with the people of Jamaica,” he concluded.