St. Lucia will join its Caribbean neighbours Barbados and Grenada in being removed from a list of tax havens drawn up by the European Union.
The Reuters news agency said it had seen an EU document indicating that Bahrain, the Marshall Islands and St. Lucia will be removed from the list next week.
It said that the latest decision was taken by the EU Code of Conduct Group, which includes tax experts from the 28 member states.
The EU finance ministers are expected to endorse the proposal at their regular monthly meeting in Brussels on March 13.
Last week, CARICOM leaders who met in Haiti for their 29th inter-sessional summit, called on their finance ministers and central bank governors of the region to meet “expeditiously” to consider new proposals as regional governments continue to react to decisions by Europe in listing some countries as tax havens.
Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, whose country remains the only Caribbean nation on the EU black list, told reporters last week that the regional countries were being “threatened” by the unilateral decision of the European Union to “blacklist” several islands even as the region has tried to comply with the necessary legislative requirements.
