Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says cash flow con­straints have re­sult­ed in a one-month de­lay in com­plet­ing the re­pay­ment of val­ue added tax­es to com­pa­nies and bu­reau­cra­cy.

Im­bert dis­missed a news­pa­per re­port which he said cen­tred around the “tar­di­ness in re­pay­ing VAT to com­pa­nies” and wish­es to ad­dress the is­sues raised.

Last Oc­to­ber, Im­bert, dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, said that VAT re­funds owed to small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es (SMEs) would be paid by De­cem­ber 31, 2024.

But the news­pa­per said that many busi­ness­es that ap­plied for these re­funds re­port­ed not re­ceiv­ing them, lead­ing to set­backs in their op­er­a­tions.

In a brief state­ment, Im­bert said that as a re­sult of oil and gas pro­duc­tion be­ing be­low es­ti­mat­ed lev­els, cou­pled with de­pressed oil and gas prices in the lat­ter half of cal­en­dar year 2024, the rev­enue col­lect­ed by the Gov­ern­ment in the last three months of cal­en­dar 2024 was low­er than ex­pect­ed.

“As a re­sult, the Gov­ern­ment had to pri­ori­tise on its ex­pen­di­ture, ad­dress ur­gent bills first and de­lay VAT re­funds.”

Im­bert said, how­ev­er, oil and gas prices re­cov­ered in No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber last year “and rev­enue col­lec­tion stem­ming from the Tax Amnesty has been on the uptick.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, there is now suf­fi­cient cash flow to ful­fil the com­mit­ment made with re­spect to VAT re­funds to SMEs. There­fore, the Min­istry in­tends to make good on its com­mit­ment and fol­low through on these SME VAT re­funds by the end of Jan­u­ary 2025,” he added.