Resilience of int’l business sector being shown

President of the Barbados International Bus-iness Association (BIBA), Marlon Waldron has described last week’s announcement that four international business companies will have their licenses revoked as “evidence that Barbados’ regulatory machinery is working and is efficient and effective”.

He made this observation during yesterday’s International Business Week 2017 Conference “Prospering in the Technological Era: Innovate, Integrate, Motivate,” held at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.

Those companies, which remain nameless for the time being, will no longer be able to operate in Barbados over allegations of money laundering, corrupt practices and defrauding citizens in foreign jurisdictions. “This can only have a positive impact on our global reputation,” Waldron remarked.

“The question constantly being posed by those in authority has now been answered. We now have documented evidence that that the regulations are working”.

Sector Resilient
Despite the challenges faced from time to time, BIBA’s President made it clear that Barbados’ International Sector is resilient.

“We must not allow ourselves to be side-tracked by the negative things we hear from those that should know better. We must remain steadfast in our quest to make Barbados the number one choice for doing business in this part of the world,” he stressed.

“Rumours about us closing for business or that the OECD’s Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPs) Initiative somehow marks the end of this sector is nothing more than a fable. It is nothing short of shocking that someone with access to the media and
who should know better, and who really benefitted from international business would say that it is a mistake to start the international business sector in Barbados”.

Waldron also acknowledged that BIBA has been working with all the stakeholders to ensure that they are contributing to decisions and ideas that affect the industry and Barbados, as a whole.

He highlighted that the BEPs initiative, “is one such issue where we have been meeting with the Minister on a continuous basis, representatives of our insurance committee – which I had the honour of chairing previously – meets with the Financial Service Commission as often as is necessary to discuss and reach understandings on matters of concern to that particular industry”.

“In recent times the discussion had centred around such as things as ring fencing…of course our tax and legal profession committees continue to make themselves available to assist the Ministry and other government agencies as needed,” he said. (TL)