‘IB SECTOR OVERSIGHT’

The Government and the Opposition of Barbados have failed in their oversight of the International Business Sector, says Leader of the United Progressive Party (UPP), Lynette Eastmond.

While noting that Double Taxation Agreements (DTAs) have been negotiated, she believes that they have been put on the shelf.

“No significant effort has been made to utilise these DTAs for business,” she observed during a press conference held at Courtyard by Marriott yesterday.

“We spend money negotiating them – you actually in some instances visit the country for the purposes of negotiation and Barbados used to send a fairly big delegation. So, it is not cheap, it takes up a lot of time and money…The purpose of the DTAs is for business, it is not just to be able to say that we have 10, 15 Double Taxation Agreements.

“That has not been done, the focus has not been on developing the business, the focus has been on simply saying we have these Double Taxation Agreements and there are sitting on the shelf.”

The Party Leader, who is the candidate for The City of Bridgetown said that if the Government was going to agree to join the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) fora, the Small States Forum which has been created out of the OECD initiative on Harmful Tax Competition should have been maintained.

In fact, she stressed that there is no reason why CARICOM should not have a similar forum.

“Because the CARICOM countries are the ones that that are attacked most, so there should be a similar forum within CARICOM… We should have a similar approach, we can work with the OECD but when necessary we must step out of that forum as CARICOM, and say this is our position with respect to the international business sector.”

Furthermore, Eastmond is of the view there should be a more strategic approach to the issues of the OECD, not simply a reactionary one.

“Instead of doing its best to stave off another blacklisting by mere compliance, Barbados should have taken a more strategic view of the sector which would eventually cause Barbados to emerge from these political battles with the European Union and the OECD, when if only if for a while,” she pointed out.

“We must look at it within the context of this being an attack by developed countries on developing countries, to ensure that they retain the largest part of the economic pie in the world. So, that they can maintain their standard of living and all the policies that they put in place which we say is wonderful and we should adopt – this is to ensure that they can continue to pay for those things.

“Also, there is failure to recognise that this is an ongoing battle for a share of the world services economy which will be continuous,” Eastmond further stressed.