BVI PLAYS MAJOR ROLE IN OECD NEGOTIATIONS
Director of Financial Services Mr. Robert Mathavious has been
selected as the Overseas Territories representative on a joint
working group with the Commonwealth, CARICOM, the Pacific Islands
Forum and OECD Countries to further negotiations on harmful tax
practices in a number of jurisdictions. He will be assisted by
Attorney General the Honourable Cherno Jallow.
The working group was formed out of a two-day meeting in Barbados
organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) and the Commonwealth Secretariat. Representatives of more
than 40 jurisdictions and international and regional organizations,
such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank,
CARICOM, the Caribbean Development Bank and the Inter-American
Development Bank, attended the meeting, held under the chairmanship
of Barbados' Prime Minister Hon. Owen Arthur.
This working group will be co-chaired by Australia and Barbados.
The provisional list of members also includes Antigua/Barbuda,
the Cook Islands, France, Ireland, Japan, Malaysia, Malta, the
Netherlands, Vanuatu and the United Kingdom.
In reporting on the Barbados meeting during a press conference
Monday, BVI Chief Minister Hon. Ralph T. O'Neal said the OECD
and Commonwealth Countries have agreed on a way forward in efforts
to achieve global cooperation on harmful tax practices, through
a dialogue based on shared support for the principles of transparency,
non-discrimination and effective exchange of information on tax
matters.
Chief Minister O'Neal said the mandate of the working group is
two-fold, first to take the three principles and find a mutually
acceptable political process by which they can be turned into
commitments. "This process, if successful, would replace
the OECD's process in the context of its Memorandum of Understanding,"
he reported.
Secondly, members will examine how to continue the dialogue begun
in Barbados. The group will explore how the recently created
Global Forum on Taxation can evolve into an inclusive global
forum, which would promote global cooperation on tax matters
and identify further relevant tax issues for consideration in
any such forum.
The working group will hold its first meeting before the end
of this month in London and will make its first report ahead
of a meeting to be organized in Tokyo by February 15th/16th,
2001.
According to Hon. O'Neal, the BVI played a key role in insisting
that Overseas Territories are represented in the working group.
It is expected that a meeting of the OT's will be convened in
the British Virgin Islands very soon to "iron out and concretize
our collective point of view" before the first meeting of
the group, scheduled for London later this month.
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