Caribbean Times 1st Issue - Monday 20th February 2017

More documents

Recommendations

Info

8 c a r i b b e a n t i m e s . a g Monday 20th February 2017 Regional leaders want continued ‘fruitful and mutual” relationship with United States GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders say they are looking forward to “continuing the fruitful and mutually beneficial relationship with the new United States administration”. At the end of their inter-sessional summit here on Friday, the regional leaders said they “emphasised the importance of the long-standing relationship between the Community and the United States of America. “We also recognised the importance of the recently adopted bipartisan, US-Caribbean Strategic Engagement Act of 2016 that seeks to increase US engagement with the governments and civil society of the region,” CARICOM Chairman and host, President David Granger told reporters. At the start of the summit, Barbados Prime Minister Frendel Stuart said 19 Barbadians had been detained under the US travel ban. “In the meeting this morning, the Foreign Minister (Maxine McClean) showed me a text message or an email message she had just received saying that 19 Barbadians had been identified in this whole process,” Stuart told reporters. He said his administration would be investigating Front row (l-r): Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dr. Hon. Ralph Gonsalves; President of Haiti H.E. Jovenel Moise; Prime Minister of Dominica, Hon. Roosevelt Skerrit; President of Guyana, H.E. David Granger; Prime Minister of Grenada, Dr. Hon. Keith Mitchell; Prime Minister of Barbados, Hon. Freundel Stuart; Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Ambassador Irwin LaRocque Back row (l-r): Hon. Sean Astwood, representing the Premier of the Turks and Caicos Islands; Hon. Sarah Flood-Beaubrun, representing the Prime Minister of St. Lucia; Hon. Wilfred Elrington, representing the Prime Minister of Belize; Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Hon. Gaston Browne; Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Hon. Keith Rowley; Hon. Fred Mitchell, representing the Prime Minister of The Bahamas; Hon. Karmina Johnson Smith, representing the Prime Minister of Jamaica; Hon. Yldiz Pollack-Beighle, representing the President of Suriname; Hon. Carl Greenidge, Foreign Minister, Guyana. the reports even as he expressed surprise that Barbadians and other Caribbean nationals were being rounded up by American authorities in keeping with President Donald Trump’s January 27 order, which was intended to keep terrorists out of the US. “We did not see ourselves as threatened,” said Stuart, adding that regional leaders would now be forced to address the issue during their Georgetown deliberations. Granger told reporters that “we have a very cordial and respectful relationship with the United States. “A change in CAR- ICOM-USA relationship is not anticipated,” he said, with Grenada’s Prime Minister Dr. Keith Mitchell saying that the region “must accept there are uncertainties. “Must adopt, wait and see approach,” he said, acknowledging the region’s concerns about President Donald Trump’s new immigration policies. Meanwhile, the regional leaders have said that they discussed the future of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries (ACP) including the renewal of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement (CPA) which governs relations between the Group and the European Union (EU) and which comes to an end in 2020. “That Agreement is a unique and valued instrument from which CAR- ICOM has benefitted with regard to trade, development co-operation and political dialogue with Europe and should be renewed. The ACP Group remains a valuable construct which has facilitated relations with Africa and the Pacific and that the Group should be strengthened,” Granger added. (CMC)
Monday 20th February 2017 c a r i b b e a n t i m e s . a g 9 The Future of Financial Services in the Caribbean: International Tax Competition, Globalization and Fiscal Sovereignty A presentation by Sir Ronald Sanders On Friday 17 February 2017 At a Conference organised by Goethals Consulting Corp In Panama On “Widening the Pathways to Open Societies” I have been asked to speak on “The Future of Financial Services in the Caribbean” in the context of “International Tax Competition, Globalization and Fiscal Sovereignty”. As I speak, that future is bleak. Globalization has been a one-way street of impositions by powerful countries; fiscal sovereignty has been violated by the strong; and tax competition remains under threat from the mighty. Indeed, if the current pattern of incursions, restrictions and false labelling of Caribbean jurisdictions as ‘tax havens’, and the Caribbean as a region of ‘high risk’, is not halted soon and swiftly, not only will financial services have no future, but the Caribbean region as a whole could be relegated to the backwater of global existence. The evidence of the last 30 years speaks for itself. OECD CAMPAIGN It is clear that the major member states of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have been embarked upon a campaign to eliminate competition in financial services from Caribbean countries and other developing states, since the 1990s. That campaign has never waned. It has gained validation in the international community by seducing or coercing some developing countries into participation in groups, created at the behest of G7 countries, ostensibly to establish globally acceptable rules on tax information exchange, transparency, common reporting standards, anti-money laundering, counter terrorism financing and tax evasion. One such group is the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax purposes which claims 139 members and in which the countries of the European Union are over represented since they participate as individual nations and as a collective body. At the end of the day, the seemingly broad membership of the OECD Forum is window-dressing for the menacing objectives of the more powerful countries. The high number of members, masks the fact that no small nation can resist the candy-coated but bitters pills with which they are presented. In the end, sanctions hang like the sword of Damocles over the heads of those who participate. The entire process remains one of pushing the agenda of automatic access to tax information and ending tax competition in keeping with the prevailing ideology of European Union countries especially. SOVEREIGN RIGHTS IG- NORED Despite all the rhetoric of ‘level playing fields’ and respect for sovereign rights, the world remains one in which might parades in the armour of right, and power camouflages itself in the clothes of justice. In this matter, there has been – and continues to be – the most blatant disregard for the rules of international law; rules that have been spelled out by the UN and upheld by the International Court of Justice. Those rules specify quite clearly that By Sir Ronald Sanders States cannot intervene in areas solely within the jurisdiction of other States, and international organisations are restricted from intervention within the domestic jurisdiction of states. Yet, the powerful nations of the world – clustered in the OECD – do precisely the opposite. And, weak and vulnerable nations are powerless to respond. In fear of sanctions, such as blacklisting by OECD countries and the European Union Commission, and penalties from the United States, they acquiesce; surrendering their sovereignty. At the conception of the United Nations, world leaders committed themselves to a world “governed by justice and moral law”, one in which they asserted the “pre-eminence of right over might and the general good against sectoral claims”. If, in the history of the UN, that commitment was ever respected, it has certainly been disregarded if not reversed in cont’d on pg 10
Page 1 and 2: Informative, reliable, enriching! M
Page 3 and 4: Monday 20th February 2017 c a r i b
Page 7: Monday 20th February 2017 c a r i b

Caribbean Times 1st Issue - Monday 20th February 2017

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?