The de­ci­sion by the Eu­ro­pean Union’s Eco­nom­ic and Fi­nan­cial Af­fairs Coun­cil to re­move T&T from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s list of non-co­op­er­a­tive ju­ris­dic­tions for tax pur­pos­es has drawn sup­port from the coun­try’s lead­ing busi­ness groups, which view the move as a sig­nif­i­cant step in restor­ing con­fi­dence in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

The delist­ing, con­firmed on Tues­day, fol­lows years of leg­isla­tive and reg­u­la­to­ry ad­just­ments aimed at meet­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly agreed stan­dards on tax trans­paren­cy and fair tax­a­tion. The EU tax-list­ing frame­work forms part of broad­er glob­al ef­forts to ad­dress tax eva­sion and harm­ful tax prac­tices, and re­moval in­di­cates com­pli­ance with good gov­er­nance bench­marks.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) de­scribed the de­vel­op­ment as a pos­i­tive out­come for the coun­try’s trade and in­vest­ment prospects.

In a state­ment, the As­so­ci­a­tion said it had close­ly mon­i­tored the mat­ter be­cause of its im­pli­ca­tions for the na­tion’s tax stand­ing and ex­ter­nal com­mer­cial re­la­tion­ships.

The TTMA not­ed that the re­moval val­i­dates re­forms un­der­tak­en to ad­dress long-stand­ing de­fi­cien­cies in tax trans­paren­cy and to align do­mes­tic frame­works with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. It high­light­ed an­tic­i­pat­ed ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing im­proved ac­cess to Eu­ro­pean mar­kets for lo­cal ex­porters, the re­moval of de­fen­sive tax mea­sures, and en­hanced over­all trad­ing con­di­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to the TTMA, com­pli­ance with glob­al tax stan­dards strength­ens T&T’s cred­i­bil­i­ty and sup­ports its ca­pac­i­ty to mo­bilise do­mes­tic re­sources for so­cio-eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. It al­so iden­ti­fied po­ten­tial gains in bi­lat­er­al eco­nom­ic re­la­tions with Eu­ro­pean part­ners, par­tic­u­lar­ly in terms of trade, in­vest­ment flows, and ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nanc­ing.

The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce of T&T (Am­cham T&T) al­so wel­comed the an­nounce­ment, stat­ing that re­moval from the list is ex­pect­ed to en­hance in­vestor con­fi­dence and re­duce rep­u­ta­tion­al and com­pli­ance risks for com­pa­nies con­duct­ing busi­ness with Eu­ro­pean coun­ter­parts. It added that the change should im­prove ac­cess to in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial mar­kets and re­in­force the sta­bil­i­ty of the lo­cal fi­nan­cial ser­vices sec­tor.

Am­cham T&T ac­knowl­edged the sus­tained tech­ni­cal en­gage­ment led by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and pub­lic of­fi­cials with­in the Min­istry of Fi­nance and oth­er state agen­cies.

The Cham­ber cred­it­ed those ef­forts with bring­ing the coun­try in­to align­ment with the EU’s tax good gov­er­nance cri­te­ria.
The or­gan­i­sa­tion fur­ther in­di­cat­ed that it had con­sis­tent­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for this coun­try’s re­moval from the list, en­gag­ing both do­mes­ti­cal­ly and with Eu­ro­pean stake­hold­ers. It said the out­come re­flects con­struc­tive col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.

Both as­so­ci­a­tions sig­nalled that they in­tend to lever­age the de­vel­op­ment in their on­go­ing pro­mo­tion as a com­pet­i­tive des­ti­na­tion for trade and in­vest­ment. They main­tain that the delist­ing strength­ens the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al stand­ing and pro­vides a more sta­ble plat­form for busi­ness ex­pan­sion, cross-bor­der part­ner­ships, and long-term eco­nom­ic growth.