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Dropping the ball in slow motion

Patrick Hoyos Published November 15, 2011
It seems like one of those cricket moments re-run in Slo-Mo, showing exactly how a routine catch was fumbled and then dropped, to the almost physical pain of everyone watching.
 
How could he have missed that, we all cry? Well, we’re only human, we mutter, but it never suffices.
 
Especially when the team’s big loss can be traced back to that one avoidable mistake.
 
I am reminded of that slow motion agony when wondering how the Barbados government missed several deadlines in its bid to retain “white list” status as an offshore jurisdiction.
 
How could they? It was routine. Didn’t they know the importance of it? I mean, how could it have been allowed to happen? 
 
Last week we finally met one deadline, the very last one. Now, we move on to the next phase.
 
Listen, these people are not kidding. We can moan about sovereignty and this or that, but the OECD is not playing. We are the only ones who are.
 
We moved from being the only, repeat only, independent Caribbean country to have made the white list back in 2009, to one which just couldn’t get its act together, and barely scraped through the door as it was almost firmly closed.
 
This at a time when the hole in our government revenues caused by the “economic downturn” has severely impacted our total economy, causing us to borrow far more than we should have had to for operating, that is, day-to-day recurring, expenses.
 
Yet, even with the urgent need to rebuild our offshore business clear for everyone in government to see, we let this thing fall by the wayside up to the almost bitter end.
Where is the leadership?
 
After receiving scathing criticism from the Barbados International Business Association on the issue, Minister of International Business George Hutson didn’t bother to offer facts to rebut the criticism. All he wanted them to know was that he now saw BIBA as delving into politics, you know, becoming anti-administration, and wondered aloud if they knew they got a subvention every year worth a hundred grand.
 
So perhaps Mr. Hutson might care to respond to these questions:
 
• Was it known to Cabinet as long ago as early last December, via its sub-committee on economic policy, that Barbados’ might not be allowed into Phase 2 of the Global Forum Peer Review Assessments, effectively kicking us off the white list?
 
• Is it correct to state that the only way around this was felt to be the speedy amendment of our Income Tax Act, so that we could let the Global Forum know by January this year before their scheduled tax haven update?
 
• That we missed the deadline and were duly listed as non-compliant? And that this non-compliance prompted the UK to put us in a whole new category (remember how upset we all were about that)?
 
• And would you agree that all of this would have been avoided by timely action in your ministry, Mr. Hutson?
 
A few more questions, Mr. Hutson.
• When the Income Tax act was amended, was the Ministry of International Business not asked to make this known immediately to the OECD Global Forum, but did not do so until too late? In fact, not until after the forum let it be known that our inaction had made it impossible for our review to proceed before its July meeting?
 
• And is it correct to state that a supplementary report due in time for the July meeting was submitted late, and even then the Peer Review committee got back to us right away with questions? And that we undertook to answer them all, and sign a tax information treaty with Denmark and a double taxation agreement with Iceland, by September?
 
• And is it correct to state that we did not go to the September meeting, and even up until mid-October when the government delegation headed off to Paris (in first class, no doubt) for the Global Forum meetings, a required Cabinet paper on the matter had not been presented to the Cabinet? And that once more we promised to sign up everything on November 3rd? 
 
• Is it true that the UK protocol remains unsigned (the UK, imagine that!) and that Barbados’ response to the Peer Review Group Assessors was only submitted on November 9, 2011, the last possible date?
 
If the above questions are substantially correct, could you answer just one more? 
 
What exactly do you all do over there at the Ministry of International Business?
 
This incredible dithering by our government has allowed other politicians far more powerful than ours to stomp all over our reputation. To wit: French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has now put us into his own little group of 11 countries which he deems tax havens. “Sarkozy said the offending countries should be shunned by the international community, because they declined to exchange all tax information automatically with other countries,” said one report on Mr. Sarkozy’s speech at the closing of the G20 summit last week.
 
To be sure, Switzerland and Uruguay, two of the other countries named are furious.
But haven’t we played right into the hands of the powerful who do not want the offshore sector to prosper because, let’s face it, they want the tax revenues for their own coffers?
 
So as the wide highway that used to be the path to offshore sector success now narrows to a tightrope, with not much a safety net below, why are we not acting like skilled tightrope walkers, instead of roaming about as if we are on an easy saunter on the Garrison Savannah?