TIEA

Tax Information Exchange Arrangements. The Chief Minister and the Minister of Finance, with assorted public servants and hangers-on, have gone off to London to negotiate an increase in Anguilla’s permissible borrowing facility. For some reason the FCO retains a brake on the borrowing ability of the Overseas Territories. Anguilla is now reaching the uppermost limit of its borrowing, and the government ministers need an increase if they are to maintain the high level of government expenditure they had planned in the immediate period before the general elections due early next year. That negotiation is what they told us the trip to London was about.

Someone has just brought to my attention the following article published on the website of HM Revenue in London. The Chief Minister has signed a Tax Information Exchange Arrangement with the British Government. My correspondent asked me whether it had received much publicity in Anguilla. He enquired if I had any reason to believe that the Bar Association and the Anguilla Financial Services Association were consulted on what impact it would have on Anguilla? The answer to both questions is no, I very much doubt that the Chief Minister consulted with any of the relevant stake holders before he signed this Agreement.

I doubt even the Ministers of government, including the Minister of Finance, had the faintest clue that it was going to be signed.

Revenue probably presented it to him at a briefing, and he would have said, “Okay, just let me sign it while I am over here.”

That is how we run government in Anguilla.