The Tribune

• Campaigner says govt still needs to do more work

• Seven years on and no Freedom of Information yet

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Implementing a corporate tax would move the country towards more progressive taxation, accountability and fiscal transparency, according to a governance reformer.

Matt Aubry, the Organisation for Responsible Governance’s (ORG) executive director, told Tribune Business that notwithstanding the US Fiscal Transparency report there more details need to be taken into consideration before the country can claim to be fully fiscally transparent - and urged policy makers to undertake the work required for true transparency before they move towards implementing a corporate tax.

Mr Aubry added that corporate tax is a move towards a more progressive style of taxation and has a lot of potential to bring value to the Bahamian people. “Our consideration would be that as you move towards any taxation, parallel, you’ve got to have more focus on accountability and transparency,” he said.

“We were started based on VAT and the government took the numbers that came out of the consultation, and did not want to move on the policies that were put forward in exact same statements, statements by the experts. So we still today, seven years later, don’t have Freedom of Information (FOI). We have fiscal responsibility and then the most recent administration changed the terms of that fiscal responsibility, lessening the level of reporting, and still not fully developing out the role of the fiscal committee, which is supposed to bring oversight and insight.”

The lack of FOI makes any transparent rating null and void for the mere fact that Bahamians don’t have access to the information when they request it. Furthermore, when it comes to fiscal transparency, particularly when dealing with the budget process, there are details hidden in the line items that observers would have to fish out in order to make sense of what they mean in addition to them not having any clear explanation to what those heads are meant for. “We also need to be having parallel conversations about how do we bolster up these mechanisms for oversight transparency, so that people can have great assurance that the way the government monies are being brought in, they are not only managing them appropriately and putting them to where the citizens interests really are, but also that there’s a level of understanding as to how they’re, how they’re being put forward,” he said.

The Bahamas has been deemed fully compliant in the US Department of State’s 2023 Fiscal Transparency Report a local daily reported.

Mr Aubry responded: “I think it’s important to understand what that means, and so... it’s promising that for the first time, maybe that the US would indicate that The Bahamas has met the minimum for their endorsement on fiscal transparency. But it’s also important to understand why the US does it, what that means and what that really means to the Bahamian people.

“The US has, you know, has pushed forward certain standards - one of those is that information is presented accurately that it’s made publicly available and that the information is presented is generally reliable and that is true and that’s been true for a while, you know, the Bahamas government... every year prints and presents our Budget information, every year puts forward, since fiscal responsibility, some level of reporting, and there’s also, we have an auditor general that I think is held pretty well in esteem, who provides regular audits. But is that information easily accessible by the day-to-day citizen? Probably not. So if fiscal transparency is put in place so that there is an accountability factor, that means that someone looking should be able to come back and say this is good, this is great. This is happening, or here’s an area of concern and how is it being addressed.

He continued: “We also see that we still struggle with those issues. We’re still struggling with the issues of the public procurement, who’s got contracts, why were those contracts given and where did they go? We still don’t have the FOI Act in place. There have been promises for last year and for this coming year. But, without that, six years after the Act was passed, people still can’t go to government and make a request, as they should in law be able to get information back and if they have a question, be able to get that adjudicated based on the FOI Officer or FOI Commissioner, so those are still issues that that kind of pushed forward, when we look at fiscal transparency.”