By NEIL HARTNELL
Tribune Business Editor
nhartnell@tribunemedia.net
The Bahamas’ poor financial centre ranking is “clearly unacceptable”, a leading QC yesterday warning this nation does “not have the luxury” of a five-year fix.
Brian Moree QC, senior partner at McKinney, Bancroft & Hughes, told Tribune Business that the Bahamas needed to make “a quantum leap” in the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) to preserve its financial services industry’s competitiveness.
The Index, which is published every six months by Z/YEN, placed the Bahamas firmly in the bottom tier at 81st of 92 financial centres, and Mr Moree said “urgent” action was required to prevent financial business “going elsewhere”.
Acknowledging that the Bahamas’ ranking may result “more from perception rather than reality”, the senior attorney nevertheless said the Bahamas could not wait five to six years to achieve “significant improvement” in the GFCI Index.
He added that the structural obstacles impacting the financial services industry’s growth were the same as, or closely connected to, the issues impacting the domestic Bahamian economy, especially the ease and cost of doing business (see other article on Page 1B).
While the Bahamas improved by two places in the latest CFCI rankings, Mr Moree said 81st spot paled into comparison to rival Caribbean international financial centres (IFCs), which were all placed in the top 40.
“Any improvement in the ranking of the Bahamas in the Global Financial Centres Index is obviously a positive development, and consequently is commendable,” the senior QC told Tribune Business.
“But having said that, it’s clearly unacceptable for the Bahamas to be ranked 81st among 92 financial centres, thereby putting us in the lower tier of international rankings.
“That has to be addressed if we are going to expand and develop our financial services business in what is a very sophisticated market that is intensely competitive.”
Mr Moree’s reaction to the GFCI ranking contrasts with that of the Bahamas Financial Services Board (BFSB), which last week touted the two-spot ranking improvement and the Index’s description of this nation enjoying a “strong rise”.
Tanya McCartney, the BFSB’s chief executive, while praising the improved ranking, agreed that the Bahamas needed to improve its competitiveness in areas such as Immigration policy, tax structure and ‘ease of doing business’.
Mr Moree, though, urged the Government and private sector to collaborate for improvements in the five areas where the GFCI rates financial centres - human capital; infrastructure, financial sector development; reputation; and business environment.
Conceding that issues demanding the Minnis administration’s immediate attention had only increased in Hurricane Irma’s aftermath, he argued that the Bahamas’ ‘economic pillar’ deserved such focus given its importance to the economy and wider society.
“While in the Bahamas we think we have an established and highly professional cadre of service providers, the international community seems to rank us fairly low in the index,” Mr Moree said, “and both the Government and private sector working in collaboration with one another have to look at the five criteria and see where it is we have to make adjustments in order to address these concerns.”
Despite its own improvement, the Bahamas remains some way behind rivals such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands (BVI). Bermuda and the BVI, in particular, improved by five and 14 places, respectively, in the in the GFCI Index rankings to 29th and 37th. Cayman held its spot at 31st.
“Clearly there is work to be done here if we are going to provide the kind of environment necessary to expand our core business,” Mr Moree told Tribune Business. “We don’t have the luxury of doing this within the next three to four years.
“Both private and public sectors have to take some responsibility for addressing these issues together. The most recent ranking by the Global Financial Centre Index is a wake-up call for us to bring the level of urgency with which we have to approach this issue so we can see a significant improvement in this ranking within the next six months.”
Mr Moree continued: “As a jurisdiction we cannot afford to incrementally improve our ranking by a few spots every six months. We don’t have the luxury of time. We have to find ways to have a quantum leap in the rankings by addressing our weaknesses in a very efficient way.
“We cannot do that overnight, but we can’t wait to achieve that in the next five to six years, as business will go elsewhere. It requires focused, substantial attention bearing in mind the urgency of the matter.”
The prominent QC urged the Government and private sector to recognise the importance of “protecting the second largest industry in the Bahamas”, and added: “We have a very solid foundation to build on, and this may be more perception than reality.
“But, as is often said, perception is reality for those who take that view. We need to look at our cost base; look at our technical plant in the Bahamas; and look at Immigration policy as a development tool consistent with the growth and development of the industry, understanding the reasonable aspirations of Bahamian professionals.”
Comments
Well_mudda_take_sic 6 years, 7 months ago
Thanks to the kowtowing positions taken by this QC and others like him going back as far as 1991, we no longer have an offshore financial services sector of any great significance to the international financial community. When the FATF, IRS, OECD et al would say "Jump!" this boisterous but not too bright QC would say "How high?" And when these foreign government agencies (with their surreptitious and hideous agendas favouring their interests at the expense of ours) would 'raise the bar' or 'move the playing field' on us, this not so astute QC and others like him would simply show obsequious deference to their wishes. There's nothing more to be said about this QC who now shamelessly comes to life a few times each year to express concern about our shrinking standing in the offshore financial community, a situation for which he himself carries a heavy cross on his own back.
concernedcitizen 6 years, 7 months ago
Go rouge nation and see what find of investors you get . Only people that want to wash dirty money and don,t mind giving politicians 20 % and toten in and out in fake diesel tanks on boats .You think Atlantis ,Baha mar , Joe Lewis ,Sandals ,Beaches ,John Bull ,Frankie Wilson , Commonweaith building supplies etc etc want their capital sitting in a New York clearing bank for months on end to be scrutinize every time they order a trailer of goods ,,lets not even talk about financing etc ,,You want the Bahamian dollar to be worth 20 cents on the US ,,go rogue .Face it we are not China ,, or The US or the European union ,the big dogs always set the rules .And your nonsense about IMF ,IDB lending us money so they can collapse and get our resources cheap ..Its us that go to them hat in hand ,,w/ Cuba closed and the tourism we have done in the last forty years we never had to borrow a dime ,However when 1 in 4 people work for the public treasury and whats left over is skim off and teefed ,,where else you going to keep borrowing to keep teefin ..We will see i f Minnis is straight ,but I figure from 2012 to 2017 a billionj YES billion to two billion was out right stolen ,,geez 200 to 300 million walk out the fron t door of BOB
Well_mudda_take_sic 6 years, 7 months ago
The time for us to have been aggressive in dealing with the unjust and unfair positions and practices of agencies of governments of developed countries representing their own onshore financial centres and tax collection needs has long gone. From the outset it was all about a process of selectively blacklisting the offshore countries (playing one off against the other) in order to divide and conquer, initially under the bogus guise of fighting terrorism. This quickly evolved into fighting (at our cost) the tax dodgers of the same developed countries. The more information the developed countries realized they could get from us through their bullying tactics, the more emboldened they became to seek even more and more information. The offshore community ill-advisedly allowed itself to be beaten to a pulp rather than pursue a coordinated effort to thwart the bullying tactics of the developed countries by exposing and shaming them for their hypocrisy, intrusiveness into our internal affairs affairs, and trampling on our sovereignty. Today, most of us who need complete anonymity and privacy in our financial affairs can best achieve onshore what we are no longer able to achieve offshore. What does that tell you?!
Sign in to comment
Or login with:
OpenID