The Colombian Banana Growers Association (AUGURA) has offered it support of a government tax reform bill that seeks to reduce excess payroll charges to companies.

The group highlighted the changes would create more incentive for people to leave illegal industries to join the formal economy, like the banana export industry itself which is labor intensive and creates 30,000 direct jobs.

"The tax reform bill that is taking its course in the Congress of the Republic, founded on the principles of equity and progressiveness, whose main objective points to the generation and formalization of employment and the reduction of inequality, in our opinion attacks one of the causes of informality like high payroll levies," the association said in a release.

"Informality affects the productivity of the country and excludes a great amount of workers from social security.

"For employment-generating sectors that are labor intensive, like the banana sector clearly is, we consider opportune and healthy this reform that aims to reduce overruns on the payroll by employers, who in the end have financing of ICBF (Colombian Institute of Family Well-Being), SENA (National Training Service) and the Health System."

The association said the proposed tax system would allow for greater competitiveness and sustainability, favoring growth, investment and judicial stability.

www.freshfruitportal.com