The Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, the Hon. Donville Inniss (right), being greeted by Executive Director of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB), Reginald Farley; and President of ICAB, Lisa Padmore, during ICAB’s 23rd Annual Conference, yesterday.
Brenda Pope, Partner at KPMG, presented to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) 23rd Annual Conference on the topic ‘Barbados at 50 – A Balanced Scorecard Assessment’.
THE Ministry of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Develop-ment continues to work on the Beneficial Ownership Declaration, says the Hon. Donville Inniss.
However, he has made it clear that it is within a confidential arrangement and not in a public space as other countries are demanding.
“Some jurisdictions are actually demanding that we have a register of beneficial owners to be located in a public space – accessible by law enforcement officials, who they have yet to define.
“Thus far, about 50 countries have signed on and as I said to my counterparts in the EU countries and Britain in particular last week – Barbados is not on board with that,” he stressed.
Inniss, who was at the time addressing the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados (ICAB) 23rd Annual Conference, said that Barbados is not prepared to place in a public space – the names, addresses – the information of beneficial owners of corporations in this jurisdiction.
“It’s a matter that we intend to fight vigorously,” he told the gathering at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC), yesterday.
“Not only does it place the life and well-being of those beneficial owners at great risk – to satisfy the enthusiasm of a few overly zealous tax administrators, but it also goes against the fundamentals of the need for a company and the purpose of a corporation and Barbados stands firmly behind that.”
The Minister responsible for Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development also revealed to the Accounting Professionals that Barbados’ overall rating on implementing the standard on Transparency and Exchange of Information has been upgraded by the Global Forum, from “partially compliant” to “largely compliant”.
He explained that some Barbados entities that were not able to access financing and support from some international financial institutions because of their policy concerning countries of “partially compliant” status, will now be able to engage with them more fully.
Minister Inniss therefore took the opportunity to thank the various agencies and government departments for their advice, support and contributions during the last site visit by the Global Forum’s Assessment Team in preparation for the supplementary report.
However, he underscored that there is still much to do, as work is ongoing to implement the Common Reporting Standard for Automatic Exchange of Information in 2017, since Barbados has already signed on an early adopter, and also prepare for the next peer review by the Global Forum in the latter half of 2018.
“The next set of reviews will focus heavily on the issue of beneficial ownership and the quality of exchange in information,” he disclosed. (TL)
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