The Editor, Sir:

No well thinking person in Jamaica should ever contemplate putting a tax on reading material/books. Prime Minister Bruce Golding, the minister of finance, Audley Shaw and Andrew Holness, minister of education, should immediately give and support instructions to remove the General Consumption Tax (GCT) from books/reading material as this is a bad idea.

Our present government, should do what the People's National Party administration did when faced with a similar dilemma. It listened to reason from the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party along with other interest groups and rolled it back to exempt status. The book industry in Jamaica needs a stimulus package to encourage the manufacturing of books locally. At present, most of our literary material is not printed in Jamaica even when the content is of Jamaican origin. Books are printed in China, Singapore, Korea, India, Thailand, United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain and Trinidad. The book industry should be made a tax-exempt industry - from raw material to final product - under a Book Industry Incentives Act. We are talking about export earnings, import substitution and the creation of jobs.

Most books get to the consumers through the more-than-2,000 bookshops islandwide which are responsible for the movement of books throughout Jamaica. This industry employs at least 50,000 persons directly and indirectly. A GCT on books is not only a threat to education and national development but a threat to the livelihood of many, forcing the majority of small entrepreneurs out of the business by putting financing out of their reach and leaving the under half a dozen large operators to monopolise the industry.

A tax on books is outright madness, and, as Franklin McGibbon of the Book Industry Association of Jamaica has pointed out, would present an administrative nightmare at all levels. A book tax is definitely not in the interest of a nation where reading should be encouraged at all levels, not only in churches but in homes, on the corners, on the buses, at the beach.

I am, etc.,

MICHAEL SPENCE

Micspen2@hotmail.com

Kingston 6