And Barrow says U.S. sympathetic to offshore banking sector
Last week in Trinidad at the Summit of the Americas, Barrow said that since Belize holds the chair of CARICOM, he intended to use that leverage to champion issues that affect the region. A major issue that affects Belize and CARICOM countries is the offshore industry. Developed nations such as the U.S. and Canada use Caribbean jurisdictions as tax havens for their wealthy citizens. P.M. Barrow said he strongly spoke of the importance of the offshore sector to CARICOM and he said that the U.S. congressmen whom he spoke to in bilateral meetings were sympathetic with the region.
Prime Minister Dean Barrow
“It is an offshore financial sector. It is most unjust that the developed countries because of problems that to some extent are of their having to do with own making, having to do with these very tricky financial instruments, having to do with proper lack of regulation, having to do with all sorts of reasons but reasons that cannot be traced to the developing world. It is most unjust that they should now seek to gang up on us and to, as I put it, precipitated this pile-on effect. The way to deal with the concerns that the devolved world has in our view is to have us sign individual double taxation treaties with the particular countries; Canada, the United States, the U.K. that will also contain provisions for the effective exchange of tax information. That is the surest way of guaranteeing them that our jurisdictions are not being abuse. The double taxation agreements would of course require that if we are taxing the money here, the developed countries don’t tax the money there. As I said, I cannot tell you that we succeeded completely in terms of the case that we pressed to both President Obama and the congressional delegation. I won’t go beyond saying, as I tried to indicate earlier, that there appeared to be a great deal of understand and sympathy for our position and what seems certain is that whatever is done will not be as draconian as the first draft legislation suggests.”
Last week in Trinidad at the Summit of the Americas, Barrow said that since Belize holds the chair of CARICOM, he intended to use that leverage to champion issues that affect the region. A major issue that affects Belize and CARICOM countries is the offshore industry. Developed nations such as the U.S. and Canada use Caribbean jurisdictions as tax havens for their wealthy citizens. P.M. Barrow said he strongly spoke of the importance of the offshore sector to CARICOM and he said that the U.S. congressmen whom he spoke to in bilateral meetings were sympathetic with the region.
