PM: We object!

WITH Barbados expected to be placed on the European Union’s blacklist today, Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has written to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union (UN) president Charles Michel to register Barbados’ strong objection to the move.

A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary Roy Morris revealed that letters were dispatched to the two officials over the weekend and in them, she described the decision of the EU as “wrong” and “disproportionate”.

In the statement it was noted that when the Prime Minister explained the situation to persons attending a political meeting at The Glebe, St. George on Sunday night in support of her party’s St. George North candidate, Toni Moore, she compared it to a man who was caught with a spliff being handed a death sentence.

At the same time, Mottley placed the blame squarely at the feet of the last Democratic Labour Party administration, saying the then Government repeatedly refused to answer requests from authorities in North America and Europe

for tax information on international business companies that operate from Barbados.

Mottley told her audience: “There is something called the International Business Sector, and those are companies from outside that come and set up in Barbados. They want to set up here because they believe they can do business here, they believe the country has a lower tax rate, they feel the country is safe, and believe they can get for their workers who have to work here, a quality of life that is sometimes better than in Canada, or New York or London.

“But the Europeans, in the European Union, feel that they can … call us to account and tell us whether we should be blacklisted, or whitelisted, or accepted. And why? Because we have been doing so well with respect to attracting businesses here from the days of Tom Adams right through for the last 40 years, that they now want to ring-fence, and to stop us from being able to be attractive globally.

“Now, what does that matter to you? Almost half of the corporation taxes that are paid in this country are paid by [overseas] companies... They choose to put their businesses in Barbados, and because of that, we have been able to ease your burden with the level of taxes that you as a Bajan have to pay in this country.

“Do you understand what I am telling you? You can pay a little less because others are doing business here and are contributing to the same taxes needed to pay for your child to go to university, to pay for the hospital to treat you, to pay for us to do the roads, to pay for us to pay the public servants, to pay for us to do all the things that we have to do as a Government.

“But the European Union is adamant that it has the right to blacklist countries – and even that phrase I find offensive. They are now trying to say “uncooperative jurisdictions”, but they can’t change the fact that they started with “blacklist”. Well, I am black, and I am proud, and if you feel that black is negative well, I don’t feel it’s negative. So let’s start from that premise!”

Prime Minister Mottley reiterated that Barbados is going to get a “lash” globally for something not done by this Government, but by the last administration and is left to “clean up” what was left behind.

“...The EU lagged then and want to lash us today, and is telling us that because the last Government did not exchange information with countries, and because the last Government did not do audits with the people who do business with the International Business Sector, who we call the corporate service providers, we now have to take a lash as a country.

“Well, we will take it, but we will … disagree with them. I wrote the Chancellor of Germany again this weekend, and I wrote the President of the EU Charles Michel again this weekend, and in your name I told them that it is wrong and disproportionate.

“It is disproportionate. And why? They are going to get their banks and their financial institutions to put measures on us. And we say that when they try to do that most of the banks say, ‘But Barbados is too small!’ They don’t even think we are a problem for them because as far as they are concerned, we are a dot on the map. But the dot on the map means they will just say to people, ‘We aren’t banking with you! We aren’t doing business with you!’

“And companies that may have been here 50 years, …100 years, now stand to be affected. And therefore, when I tell you that we are cleaning up, believe you me, as God is my witness, we are.”