BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Monday January 8, 2018 – The European Union (EU) has written to the Barbados government, providing what is believed to be an explanation of its decision to include the country on a December 5, 2017 list of 17 global tax havens.

However, it appears that the 28-member grouping has kept this country on the blacklist, despite Government’s protests.

Minister of International Business Donville Inniss confirmed to online newspaper Barbados Today that he received correspondence from the political and economic bloc in response to a letter he sent last month.

However, he refused to disclose its contents, and would only say that he would be signing another letter “to respond to them regarding the question that Barbados be removed from whatever list they have”.

Inniss said he was hoping the issue would be settled soon, even while admitting that similar challenges would pop up from time to time.

“In the international business we will continue to have challenges with our partners in other jurisdictions, and the European Union matter remains there. I hope that will be settled early in the New Year,” he said.

Barbados was among four Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries on the list of 17 blacklisted by the EU as non-cooperative tax havens. The others were: Grenada, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.

Those placed on the list were described as not doing enough to crackdown on offshore avoidance schemes.

About two weeks after the list was published, Inniss had said he did not know “what the problem is”, and in the absence of clarification from the EU, it was difficult to determine what steps Barbados needed to take in order to be removed from the list.

Inniss, who had previously described the blacklisting “unfortunate and unfair”, had also suggested that Barbados was a fully cooperative jurisdiction when it came to taxation matters, and that it had made the required commitments to either amend or eradicate its regimes that were not in line with EU specifications by the December 5, 2017 deadline. (Barbados Today)