Bharath knocks UNC on FATCA stalemate

He said it is time to stop playing politics with important matters.

He said, “I see that the Bankers Association and the business community have taken the Opposition to task and I believe rightly so because I do not believe that this bill needs to go to a Joint Select Committee.

It is not such a technical bill that it needs significant input from the technocrats and even if it did, that expertise is available to the Opposition without having to go to the Joint Select Committee. This piece of legislation is far too important and critical to Trinidad and Tobago.” Last Friday, representatives of five of the country’s major business organisations called on the Government and the Opposition to put aside political wrangling and pass the FATCA legislation.

At a news conference at Scotiabank’s headquarters at the corner of Park and Richmond Streets, Port-of-Spain, they all stressed the urgency of passing the legislation by the new deadline - the end of February 2017. President of the Bankers Association, Anya Schnoor said the association discussed this issue with the previous government from 2012 to 2014 when the then government accepted the intergovernmental agreement (IGA) 1 option and entered into an “agreement in substance” with the US Treasury Service, starting the process toward passage of the FACTA bill. Schnoor dismissed claims by Opposition Leader Kamla Persad- Bissessar that there is no deadline for the passage of the legislation and that the Government was merely scaremongering when it said the bill must be passed by the end of February.

The business groups were meeting with the Opposition directly yesterday to try to persuade it to drop its demand that the bill go to a Joint Select Committee and support the Government in the speedy passage of the legislation.