CARICOM has responded to President’ Obama’s move to close tax havens in the Caribbean. Three ambassadors from the Caribbean, including Belize’s own Nestor Mendez, were at the May 27th conference on tax havens in Washington DC.
Their message was that the pending regulations to counter tax evasion by American citizens could be tailored without harming fragile economies of the 15 member CARICOM nations who have recently ventured into the financial services business.
Nestor Mendez said that “the news of an intended revamping of the entire international financial structure that had certain manifestations on Capitol Hill” has also raised concerns in Belize.
CARICOM economies have moved gradually from being based on agricultural goods, to tourism and other services, and finally to offshore financial services, Mendez said. The financial services sector “is exceptionally suited for the Caribbean” because of its “solid base of trained and trainable human resources in the Caribbean,” he said.
“We did not move ahead blindly,” Mendez said, adding that CARICOM nations expanded their financial services sectors while also complying with the existing regulatory frameworks. CARICOM nations enjoy some of the most open, transparent, and regulated systems in the world, he said. “We feel very strongly that the efforts that have been made going in this direction should not be damaged as a result of an action that was not necessarily aimed at us.”
Mendez said that CARICOM wants a level playing field with developed countries and recognition of its efforts to comply with international standards for financial regulation and transparency.
Finally, addressing the extent to which CARICOM nations’ financial systems are not up to the most advanced global standards due to a lack of administrative resources, Mendez said, “We want to see if anyone is interested helping us to get there, because we want to get there.”
It is unlikely that CARICOM’s lobbying will have much influence over Obama’s new Tax laws. The sad truth is that US is in a horrible economic state right now and it needs all the tax money it can muster to pay for the trillions of dollars of bailouts.
