Minister in the Ministry of Finance, Ryan Straughn, has underscored the importance of professionals, such as accountants, lawyers, and engineers, “aggressively” going after domestic and regional business ventures that are coming on stream, as a result of government’s policy initiatives.
Mr. Straughn emphasised this point on Tuesday while addressing the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Barbados’ Annual Tax Update hybrid event at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre.
He told the in-person and online audience that they should not fear any reforms being contemplated by government but that the focus must now be on finding more business prospects outside.
Minister Straughn stated: “I can only convince people, to the point where the interface with private enterprise, meaning lawyers and accountants and those who are, for lack of a better term, hungry enough and aggressive enough, to go after the opportunities that we are opening up from a policy perspective. The Government can only create a framework, but it is the professionals, the lawyers, the accountants, engineers, all those people who are specifically involved in areas to aggressively accompany the Government on this path…,”
He reasoned that the “full expression of government’s public policy efforts was in the creation of more opportunities for professionals to pursue more global business ventures, while providing “top class” service at a global level.
“I ask you … as we open up the space to companies across Africa, … Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, let us do for those entities, as we have done for the companies from North America and from Europe….
“As the Government seeks to rightsize the compliance aspect with respect to the OECD, and the FATF…, I say to you that our mission is not to be daunted by what compliance requires of us,” Mr. Straughn said.
The Minister stressed that the exchange of information was needed to create an environment where data and information are shared.
“The exchange of data and information is critical for policy formulation because the rightsizing of where taxation falls relies on data and information, clean data, and clean information. And I’m not asking you for clean data and clean information because we have to report externally. I’m asking you for clean data and information because we want to create the policy environment that brings more business, and you shouldn’t fear more business, because the ecosystem requires a level of dynamism.
“That would mean that the things that we were doing 25 years ago, we cannot be doing it the same way today. And therefore, it is that dynamism that is critically important for a small country, like Barbados, to pivot where it is required to pivot to allow us to be resilient economically, to stave off the idea of being on somebody’s list, because I don’t like the idea of lists, but they exist,” Mr. Straughn underlined.