Search Results for: Trinidad and Tobago

From bringing traditionally outsourced services in house to right-sizing staff, Caribbean financial professionals advising the region’s critically important tourism sector are making tough decisions to keep businesses afloat and redundancies to a minimum during Covid-19.

ACCA members speaking to A&B, however testified to solidarity among workers, clients and suppliers – and the resilience of a region used to disaster, albeit usually through extreme weather.…

Entrepreneurship abounds across the diverse island nations of the Caribbean where small, independently-owned beauty product businesses thrive and have been successfully vying for space alongside major international brands in pharmacies, boutiques and family-owned stores alike.

What many manufacturers lack in start-up capital, they make up for in innovation and close proximity to a wealth of organic, raw materials that are finding new favour with modern, discerning consumers at home, with an eye to developing export sales.…

ANTI-money laundering maybe a career that financial and legal professionals increasingly follow, but the training and qualification structure for AML/CFT is still emerging and solidifying, and there are doubts whether it will ever coalesce into a formal global structure, akin to FATF recommendations.…

THE FINANCIAL Action Task Force (FATF) has said that Iran’s failure to implement AML/CFT controls means that member countries and their financial institutions should consider taking all the precautions mandated by its guidance for high risk ML states.

Its February 19-21 plenary said that Iran still needed to remove an exemption for controls on designated terror groups’ financing when such organisations are “attempting to end foreign occupation, colonialism and racism” – which is taken to include groups opposing Israel.…

THE CLOSURE in November of the only oil refinery in Trinidad & Tobago, after 101 years of producing fuel in this Caribbean twin-island state, has cost thousands of jobs, impacting a large part of the nation’s economy. It means that this republic, which still possesses substantial oil and gas reserves, must now import gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel. …

Trinidad & Tobago has a problem regarding tax transparency, one that its financial sector and government want to go away. The Caribbean twin-island state remains the only country that is a member of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes Global Forum that is listed as totally non-compliant with its rules – see https://www.oecd.org/tax/transparency/exchange-of-information-on-request/ratings/.…

THE ACCA-qualified group finance director for the largest conglomerate in Trinidad & Tobago and a key player in the Caribbean region – the ANSA McAL group – has aligned his personal professional ambitions with his company’s goal of sturdy sustained growth.…

THE EUROPEAN Union (EU) is expanding its network of cyber-crime expertise, with a view to beefing up intelligence, protections and responses to online criminal attacks, including frauds such as identity theft, as well as hacking.

EU member states and the European Parliament are to start talks establishing from January 2021 a European Cybersecurity Industrial, Technology and Research Centre, pooling European investment in cybersecurity research, technology and industrial development.…

THE EUROPEAN Commission has included four American external territories – Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa – on a proposed blacklist of weak AML/CFT jurisdictions released today (Feb 13).

Brussels’ updated list includes 12 countries that are viewed with concern by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – the Bahamas, Botswana, North Korea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Iran, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Trinidad & Tobago, Tunisia and Yemen. …

TRADING partners with the European Union (EU) are concerned about the EU cutting the size of low duty import quotas once Britain quits the bloc, which it is scheduled to do on March 28.

The EU has released detailed plans to reduce the amount of some goods it allows into the EU, to take account of Britain exiting the single European market.…