Does the Welsh Government want our communities to turn into ghost towns? Our does it want town centres where business thrive rather than scrape by?

Yes, really, the Government down in Cardiff Bay need to seriously decide. And decide soon before our high streets are shells, where shops and businesses are shuttered.

Business rates are killing the towns of mid and west Wales.

It is madness, for example, when a shop in Aberystwyth is paying three times the rates paid by comparable businesses in Swansea or considerably more than Cardiff. Or that a Tenby shop pays roughly £100 more per square metre than a similar shop on The Kingsway in Swansea, or £70 per square metre more than a similar shop in Llanelli.

The commercial rates system is broken. And, on top of the increased National Insurance costs imposed on businesses by the Labour Government in Westminster, the Labour Government at Cardiff Bay is doing a pretty good job of killing off small businesses.

Soon, economic development in Wales will simply mean the opening of yet another charity shop on the streets of our towns.

Not only is the system broken but the discrepancies are rife. Independent companies in the town centre also pay up to 10 times as much in business rates as large companies on the outskirts of the town.

While the method of working out the cost per square metre is complicated and that the rent charged also contributes to costs, the reality is the entire business rates system needs to be refined and made fair. It’s simply not at present.

The issue was raised in the Senedd last week by Mid and West Wales MS Cefin Campbell , who called for a “fairer system for determining business rates for independent, local companies”, to “contribute to the regeneration of town centres in the region”.

He described the current rates as “frankly absurd.”

Given the differences if population and footfall, it makes no sense whatsoever that the larger centres have lower rates, while town such as Tenby, Lampeter, Cardigan, Dolgellau, Aberystwyth and Porthmadog are penalised with punishingly high business costs driven by a broken commercial rates system.