An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day the Gov­ern­ment has not joined most of its re­gion­al neigh­bours in sign­ing up to the African Ex­port-Im­port Bank (Afrex­im­bank), be­cause the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion wants its em­ploy­ees based in T&T, both lo­cal and for­eign, to earn tax-free salaries.

Row­ley’s com­ments came af­ter a talk show host claimed that Afrex­im­bank would like to set up of­fice in T&T, but is get­ting re­sis­tance.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence, T&T’s Prime Min­is­ter said the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Africa and Cari­com is ex­treme­ly close in the fi­nan­cial area as both re­gions are try­ing to in­vite in­vest­ment, grow trade, and strength­en diplo­ma­cy to work as a unit.

“You would see how it worked for COVID-19, as we had to re­ly on South Africa for our ma­jor batch of vac­cines,” the prime min­is­ter high­light­ed.

How­ev­er, Row­ley not­ed that the dif­fi­cul­ty be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced with Afrex­im­bank is that the bank is ask­ing for all its staff to earn tax-free salaries in this coun­try.

“I do not know why the bank is tak­ing that po­si­tion, but that is the bank’s po­si­tion, that its staff whether lo­cal or for­eign, would not pay tax in the coun­try. That has far-reach­ing con­se­quences be­cause it is against the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments of priv­i­leges and im­mu­ni­ties and poli­cies.

“We have sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies that re­side in Trinidad and To­ba­go and con­duct busi­ness here. The law and the poli­cies are if you are a for­eign­er work­ing with the agency, you will not be taxed in T&T, but lo­cal peo­ple work­ing for the UN or the OAS, you are tax­able in this coun­try,” the prime min­is­ter ex­plained.

Row­ley out­lined that if the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance were to agree to the lo­cals not pay­ing tax­es, it would have far-reach­ing con­se­quences for every­one. He not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment is not pre­pared at this time to ap­prove such arrange­ments.

Fur­ther, he said, in small­er ter­ri­to­ries where they do not have this prob­lem, it is eas­i­er to say “yes” to the bank on this pro­pos­al.

“It is not so easy for us, so please do not com­pare us to St Kitts, be­cause they do not have the same prob­lem. We have a large con­tin­gent of peo­ple that would be af­fect­ed by this move. We are not an­ti-bank. I met with the head of the bank some months ago at my of­fice, and we are quite keen to have the bank func­tion in the coun­try, but the terms must be ac­cept­able,” Row­ley added.

The 31st Afrex­im­bank an­nu­al meet­ings is cur­rent­ly be­ing held in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas.

At the first day of the meet­ings, calls were made to strength­en the link­ages be­tween Africa and the Caribbean.