News from the Cayman Islands for
|
| Back To Today's News |
Cayman 4th among financial centres
|
| Published on Friday, March 19, 2010 |
Email To Friend Print Version |
According to the Global Financial Centers (GFC) recently released report, prepared by the Policy and Resources Committee of the City of London. The Cayman Islands has been ranked fourth out of nine offshore financial centres. Additionally, out of seventy-five global centres considered, Cayman is rated 28th in the world.
The report is the seventh of its kind on global financial centres prepared by the City of London on a half-yearly basis since March 2007.
The report is compiled based on the findings of two main factors: Instrumental factors and financial center assessments.
Evidence of a centre’s performance in competitive areas is drawn from a range of external measures, for example, the corruption perception index and an opacity index.
Financial centre assessments were provided by responses to an ongoing online questionnaire completed by international financial services professionals. Respondents are asked to rate those centres with which they are familiar and to answer a number of questions relating to their perceptions of competitiveness.
However, despite the relatively high rankings among global and the offshore subset, Cayman was fifth of the centres perceived to be suffering the most from the global financial crisis, behind London, New York, Dubai and Reykjavik. With the exception of Reykjavik, these centres were all ranked higher than Cayman, with London and New York being jointly tied as the world’s top financial centres.
The main concerns expressed by respondents that contributed to the perception of a centre as suffering were regulatory/ ‘kneejerk’ backlash, credit risk for financial institutions, recession/inflation, increased taxation and unemployment/loss of skills and experience.
The GFC Report also identified five main areas of competitiveness of each financial centre. These were the business environment, people, infrastructure, general cooperativeness and market access. According to the GFC report, “Clearly the business environment is viewed as the key area of competitiveness - it is mentioned in responses more often than people and infrastructure combined. This is a reflection of the regulatory reaction to the financial crisis but also reflects concerns over taxation. One of the themes that emerges from the respondents is the need for predictability and stability of regulation.”
Though prepared for a different purpose, these concerns also form an integral part of the report prepared by Commission of Messrs Miller, Shaw and Jefferson on Addressing the Challenge of Fiscal Sustainability of the Cayman Islands (also called the Miller Report) presented to the Cayman Islands government and released to the public on Monday.
According to the Miller Report, “Establishment of the Commission was in response to a recommendation to Government from the U.K.’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Although the major focus of the Commission was to ‘undertake a professional assessment of the options for, and the potential impact of, new revenue sources, including direct taxation and other proposals which would significantly diversify and improve the current revenue base of the Government,’ the stated Terms of Reference for the Commission’s work are broader.
They include an analysis of spending, deficits, debt, and vulnerabilities to revenue and spending caused by the Islands’ unique geography and economy. The Commission was also tasked with drawing conclusions, making recommendations, and presenting these in an appropriate manner.”
The recommendations of the Miller report specifically spoke to the impact of taxation, advocating against the imposition of direct taxation. Other recommendations were to reduce the operating costs of government and increase the number of work permits; both of which address the question of employment. The reduction of the size of the civil service was suggested to reduce the operating cost of government. | | | | Reads : 1593 |
Back...
| Comments: |
|
| No comments on this topic yet. Be the first one to submit a comment. |
|
Back...
|
|
|
|
