It was reported recently that leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley floated the view Barbados needs to amend our system of representation in parliament to ensure there are greater checks and balances -see BU blog The Silly Proposal of Mia Mottley. As she correctly points out in the video posted our parliament is currently hijacked by the Cabinet of Barbados given the paucity or lack of a backbench. When coupled with an ineffective and irrelevant Senate the conclusion may be drawn that the time for reform of our governance system is NOW.
Mia Mottley Addresses Governance Reform
It was reported recently that leader of the Opposition Mia Mottley floated the view Barbados needs to amend our system of representation in parliament to ensure there are greater checks and balances -see BU blog The Silly Proposal of Mia Mottley. As she correctly points out in the video posted our parliament is currently hijacked by…
60 responses to “Mia Mottley Addresses Governance Reform”
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Royal Bank of Canada boosts profit by 9 per cent to $2.8 billion
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce , Canada’s fifth-biggest lender, reported a better-than-expected second-quarter profit, helped by growth across its businesses.
Scotiabank profit rises 10% to $2.01B of net income
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@Sarge
good to see your name.
Barrett was Irish by birth, and began his banking career in London. So he had the requisite British Isles CV. Carney was partially schooled in England.The Cdn commercial banks were certainly 2nd XI players in 2000. However they went on a Global buying spree, which accelerated post 2007. Today they are well within the upper tier of the Intermediate Div, and some knocking on the door of Div 1. This is partially why the Caribbean region is no longer attractive, they have their feet in many other ponds.
@HA
why don’t you open a bank in Bim? It would seem a ripe time? Minimal returns should easily attract some of the excess liquidity, and allow lending at reasonable rates. The Austin Bank has a good ring!!!In fact the Royal Bank may even offer you a sweetheart deal of some of their operations, especially if you take on some of their TrustCo’s which are literally rusting to death.
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@Hants
my financial guru friends keep warning me, my portfolio is too heavily concentrated in Bank stocks. Yet they keep on going up, increasing dividends, and reporting larger profits every quarter. I don’t want them to be the biggest, just lucrative for the shareholders. -
“Has any bank in Barbados lost money because a client defaulted on a residential mortgage?”
whatever happened to the lady Ann Riley and her issues. One H Cole was all over that but it seems to have vanished?
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@ NorthernObserver,
your financial guru friends are obviously not risk takers.
Its your money so trust your own judgement.
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@Hants
There is no risk in buying Canadian Bank Stocks, actually Northern’s friends were trying to promote the wisdom of having a balanced portfolio, but his method is working for him and that approach is also paying dividends (pun intended) for yours truly. -
Three of the big banks all come in above forecast today.
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The simple truth is that for too long people have gotten away without paying taxes. I am amazed that lawyers who are known for holding up real estate transactions , in more ways than one, are making so much noise.
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Northern,
You say that in a facetious way, but there is a serious housing crisis in Barbados on the supply side, which the foreign-owned banks are partly responsible for.
A few years ago I brought a leading mortgage lender down to Barbados with the expressed intention of setting up business.
I took him round to see a number of people and he was impressed. I even took him up to Oistin’s on the Thursday night and he engaged in some karaoke and loved it.
I then took him to a leading law firm in the shadows of the new court building and a young lawyer there promised to email him the necessary documents for setting up the company. Of course, they never arrived.
A later meeting with the head of the chambers in London turned out with the man being talked out of setting up business in Barbados. It was a case of Barbadian politicians, businesspeople and lawyers offering a service not asked for. All the man, the CEO of the company, wanted was local legal advice; he had his top team of lawyers in London to go over any documents.
In another case, I introduced Invest Barbados to a director of one of our challenger banks in London to speak at one of their conferences; but in typical Barbadian ways, the person from Invest Barbados tried bypassing me to go direct to the guy. Of course, no decent person would tolerate that. People have integrity. He too was very keen on setting up shop in Barbados and even persuaded his chairman to visit. I spoke to at least two leading QCs in Barbados to get the chairman’s dog in without going through quarantine.
So, those people who visit Barbados are often business people and they love the country. The bank director is a Yorkshireman and his idea of Heaven is to be in the same country as Garry Sobers, Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith, the heroes of his youth.
We have the opportunities to do lots of things; our problem is allowing locals to be the face of Business Barbados – but they are too cheap or conceited to hire good consultants.
By the way, whatever happened to the report by Sir Courtenay Blackman on a credit union bank?
Then again, if |Owen Arthur knew bugger all about banks, Sinckler knows even less. -
For those of you who do NOT understand the issue the tax clearances appear to be causing by way of Maria Agard’s FB page.. Also Kerri Symmonds did a reasonable job on Brasstacks yesterday although he had a hostile Glyne Murray to contend. with.
From the desk of Kyesha Applewhaite
Not everyone seems to be very familiar with the BRA Amendment Act controversy. That amendment basically requires a BRA clearance certificate for land transactions. Sounds very sensible, but there are few big concerns.
Firstly, the clearance certificate is needed for the owner of the land, but there are many transactions that may be instigated by others for e.g:
a. A tenant won’t be able to sublet to another tenant if his landlord owes BRA taxes;
b. A qualified tenant won’t be able to exercise the rights given to them by law to buy their tenantry lot if the owner owes BRA;
c. The Bank can’t sell a defaulting person’s property without first clearing that person’s personal taxes as well;
d. A person who finally gets a judgment at Court can’t ask the Court to sell their debtor’s property to repay them without clearing their debtor’s personal taxes;
e. Persons entitled to property through adverse possession probably won’t be able to get title without somehow getting a clearance certificate for the original owner;
f. A spouse or business partner who is trying to sell property could lose their share of the sale proceeds, or some of it, if the monies need to be used to first clear the other spouse’s taxes.
As such, if you’re a third party your right to use or enforce your own interest in a property will be deprived if the owner of the property owes personal taxes. Since that deprivation is without compensation, it could be seen as unconstitutional.
Another big concern is that this is being applied without set off. So if you are a business owner who has fallen on hard times and is trying to refinance your mortgage, you may be unable to do so if you owe BRA $10,000.00, even if BRA also owes you $10,000.00. You will simply have to find the money to pay BRA- but not through a Bank most likely, since you don’t have a clearance certificate!
Practically, since all banks will likely now want clearance certificates from their borrowers at least annually, it means that BRA will somehow need to churn out tens of thousands accurate clearance certificates in a timely fashion. That may be beyond their resources and capacity.
There are other big concerns with the amendments but those are the biggest, to me.
My thoughts are that the Government perhaps should have just strengthened the tools they already have. For instance, under the VAT Act, if Joe owes BRA $100 and he provides landscaping services to Jane, BRA can serve a notice on Jane telling her to pay it any monies she owes Joe instead, up to $100.00. Perhaps the Government could have simply required lawyers to give notice of impending conveyances and the amount of the net sale proceeds and served the appropriate notices.
Trying to make personal taxes something like charges on land but not quite is pretty messy and can have unintended consequences.
The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.