European Union finance ministers agreed new measures on Tuesday to force accountants and banks to report aggressive tax schemes that help companies shift profits to low-tax countries.

Ministers also added the Bahamas, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Saint Kitts and Nevis to a blacklist of tax havens, while Bahrain, the Marshall Islands and Saint Lucia were delisted, confirming earlier Reuters reports.

Under the rules, proposed by the European Commission in June, accountants, banks and lawyers would be required to inform authorities about “potentially aggressive tax planning arrangements” set up for their clients. The 28 EU states will also share information on harmful tax planning in a bid to discourage the most aggressive tax avoidance schemes.

“It is a new progress for tax justice in the European Union,” EU tax commissioner Pierre Moscovici told ministers after they agreed the overhaul.

Once the new rules are finalized and approved by the European Parliament, tax advisers in the EU will risk fines if they do not report potentially harmful cross-border tax schemes.

Penalties should be “effective, proportionate and dissuasive” but EU states will maintain discretion in setting sanctions or fines at national level.

If there is no intermediary, or the tax adviser is located outside the EU, the company or individual using the arrangement will be obliged to disclose it.

EU governments agreed on a compromise text put forward by the Bulgarian presidency of the EU, which slightly softened the Commission’s original proposal. Tax reforms require unanimity among the 28 member states.

Cross-border tax arrangements set up with jurisdictions that have a zero or “almost zero” corporate rate – such as the Channel Islands, Bahamas, Bahrain and the Cayman Islands – must be reported, despite initial opposition from some governments.

But ministers scrapped a requirement to report tax schemes with jurisdictions whose corporate rate is lower than 35 percent of the statutory average within the EU – which could have forced reporting for schemes involving countries with a tax rate

of around 7 percent.

Some states had argued such a requirement “would cause an administrative burden disproportionate to the objectives” of the new rules, a working document prepared by Bulgarian officials showed.

Smaller EU members like Luxembourg and Malta have in the past opposed stricter rules to prevent tax avoidance, fearing they could harm competitiveness. But their finance ministers gave the green light to the Bulgarian compromise. Some members, including Britain, Ireland and Portugal, have already introduced penalties at a national level for intermediaries helping set up aggressive tax schemes.

EU governments also added Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda to a “grey list,” which now includes 62 jurisdictions that do not respect EU anti-tax avoidance standards but have committed to change their practices.

Bulgarian Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov told a news conference after the meeting that commitments made by grey list countries will be made public, a move welcomed by anti-corruption groups because it will increase transparency.

Ministers agreed to move Bahrain, the Marshall Islands and Saint Lucia from the black to the grey list, after they committed to change their tax practices.

American Samoa, Guam, Namibia, Palau, Samoa, and Trinidad and Tobago were already on the blacklist set up in December.

Blacklisted jurisdictions could face reputational damage and stricter controls on their financial transactions with the EU, although no sanctions have been agreed by EU states yet.

 
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Thailand’s cabinet has agreed to draft a law to regulate cryptocurrency trading, seeking to tax the largely unregulated market.

Government spokesman Nathporn Chatusripitak said Tuesday the Ministry of Finance also proposed the new regulations to help prevent use of digital currencies in money laundering and fraud.

He said details of the proposed regulations would be announced later in the month.

In February, Thailand’s central bank issued a circular asking financial institutions to not handle transactions involving cryptocurrencies.
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Cambodia is pushing ahead with new legislation in a bid to lure foreign investors to its vibrant casino and gaming industry, promoting the Kingdom as a key gaming center in South East Asia.

The proposed legislation, expected to be passed after general elections this year, has been three years in the making and will oversee an industry currently netting the government almost $50 million in tax revenues.

Cambodian officials said the government was looking to set a tax rate for casino games at between 4 and 5 percent to match regional casinos such as Singapore.

Cambodia’s casino business, with its sense of the “Wild West”, has grown rapidly since the late 1990s, with 65 licensed casinos and the sector dominated by the Hong Kong listed Naga World Hotel and Entertainment complex in Phnom Penh.

Gambling a booming business

Ben Reichel, executive director of the Sydney-listed Donaco International, says across South East Asia there is significant demand underpinning the potential growth in the gaming industry.

“There’s a lot of unsatisfied demand in the region as a whole. If you look at the number of tables compared to somewhere like the USA, it’s actually a very low number of gaming tables available – which is why there is so much illegal competition going on,” Reichel said.

Cambodia has benefited from restrictions or outright bans on legal casinos — such as in Thailand — or where local gamblers are prevented from entry to existing casinos.

Outside Phnom Penh, where Naga World enjoys a monopoly, other key clusters of casinos are in the border town of Poipet, near Thailand, the seaport of Sihanoukville, and to the east along the border with Vietnam.

But a decision by Vietnam’s authorities to allow local gamblers to use Vietnam based casinos was seen as a threat to those casinos near Vietnam’s border.

‘Junket agents’

A major driving force in the growth of the casino business generally lies in operators, known as VIP junket agents. These operators’ role is to act as facilitators, guaranteeing an amount of revenue, with offers of free accommodation, travel and other benefits to the gamblers.

And the impact of such VIP junket operators is significant. Cambodia’s premier casino, NagaWorld, recently reported a 140 per cent growth in VIP rolling turnover to $21.1 billion for 2017 up from $8.71 billion a year earlier, according Naga Corp’s Hong Kong stock exchange released financial results of February 28.

NagaWorld revenues amounted to $625.33 million in 2017 up from $225.66 million the previous year. Its net profit rose 39 percent to $255.2 million.

Reeling in Chinese gamblers

The boon to the Cambodian market also came with an easing of visa rules for Chinese visitors. In 2017 arrivals from China rose more than 40 per cent to 1.2 million, surpassing Vietnam to become the largest source of tourists in Cambodia.

“The government has said they want to make China one of their top three — if not number one source of tourism going forward,” said Donaco’s Reichel.

In comments emailed to VOA, executives of Macau-based VIP junket operator Suncity Group said; “Chinese gamers will definitely be the main course for the VIP market in Cambodia”.

Cambodia also offers Chinese gamblers an alternative to Macau where in recent years VIP junket numbers have fallen against the backdrop of President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption.

Another ‘hot’ Cambodian gambling area

Poipet, Cambodia’s main border crossing with Thailand, is located between Siem Reap and Battambang. The Cambodian government is looking to further develop the Poipet region as an industrial zone.

Donaco’s Reichel, whose company oversees the Star Vegas casino in Poipet, says most costumers are from Thailand, but there is also a presence of gamblers from Indonesia, Malaysia, and expatriates living in Thailand.

“It really is growing rapidly and with the casino industry there you can cross the border [from Thailand] and you don’t have to change currency. The whole town operates using Thai baht — it’s like a little piece of Thailand on Cambodian soil,” he said.

But some operators are also cautious. Macau-based gaming investor, Amax International, with links to Cambodia, says the VIP market especially can be volatile.

The gaming business, it said, is sensitive to economic downturns, uncertainties, and factors affecting tourism. Amax added that countries, such as China, “may impose or adjust government restrictions on currency conversion or their ability to export currency.”
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Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called himself “a proud feminist” Monday and said all men should support women’s rights and gender equality.

His statement was loudly applauded by hundreds of women and a sprinkling of men at the opening of the annual two-week meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, a U.N. body that Guterres called “vital to end the stereotypes and discrimination that limit women’s and girls’ opportunities.”

The U.N. chief said changing “the unequal power dynamics” that underpin discrimination and violence against women is “the greatest human rights challenge of our time” – and a goal that is “in everyone’s interests.”

“Discrimination against women damages communities, organizations, companies, economies and societies,” he said. “That is why all men should support women’s rights and gender equality. And that is why I consider myself a proud feminist.”

Guterres added that this is “a pivotal moment for the rights of women and girls,” with the issue being discussed around the globe in the (hash)MeToo and (hash)Time’sUp movements.

As examples of the male-dominated world and male-dominated culture that needs changing, he said, “Women are pioneering scientists and mathematicians – but they occupy less than 30 percent of research and development jobs worldwide.”

And despite women being accomplished artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers, this year 33 men took home Oscars at the Academy Awards, but only six women did, he said.

The theme of this year’s U.N. meeting, which ends March 23, is “Empowering Rural Women and Girls.” Guterres called such women “particularly marginalized.”

According to UN Women, rural women do much of the work but fare worse than rural men or urban women.

“Less than 13 percent of landholders worldwide are women, and while the global pay gap between men and women stands at 23 percent, in rural areas, it can be as high as 40 percent,” UN Women says.

Ireland’s U.N. ambassador, Geraldine Byrne Nason, the commission chair, said its work will focus on these women “who are furthest behind” and are “disproportionately affected by violence, poverty, climate change and hunger.”

“Often their predicament quite simply shames us,” she said. 

“We want to make a difference. We have had enough rhetoric. Time is up for the debates that are long on promises and short on delivery,” Byrne Nason said. “We are on the move to bring a tangible result – one that will impact on the lives of women and girls in rural areas.”

UN Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told the opening session that almost one-third of employed women worldwide work in agriculture and there are 400 million women who are farm workers.

“Half of rural poor women in developing countries have no basic literacy, and 15 million girls of primary school age will never, never get the chance to learn to read or write in primary school,” she said. 

A rural girl is “twice as likely to be married as a child” compared to an urban girl, she added.

Mlambo-Ngcuka warned that progress toward gender equality is slowing and some gains are even reversing.

She pointed to the World Economic Forum’s 2017 “Global Gender Gap Report,” which found the gap between women and men widening in health, education, politics and the workplace for the first time since the forum’s research started in 2006.

“It predicts that it will take – and listen to this – 217 years before we achieve gender parity,” Mlambo-Ngcuka said, stressing that this can’t be allowed to happen. 

“It has never been so urgent to hold ourselves and leaders accountable for the promises to accelerate progress,” she said. “The ‘Me Too’ movement and ‘Time’s Up’ has also showed us change can happen fast – and that women must be believed. This is a moment that we intend to sustain for all.”
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The daily commute from Mexico to California farms is the same as it was before Donald Trump became president. Hundreds of Mexicans cross the border and line the sidewalks of Calexico’s tiny downtown by 4 a.m., napping on cardboard sheets and blankets or sipping coffee from a 24-hour doughnut shop until buses leave for the fields.

For decades, cross-border commuters have picked lettuce, carrots, broccoli, onions, cauliflower and other vegetables that make California’s Imperial Valley “America’s Salad Bowl” from December through March. As Trump visits the border Tuesday, the harvest is a reminder of how little has changed despite heated immigration rhetoric in Washington.

Trump will inspect eight prototypes for a future 30-foot border wall that were built in San Diego last fall. He made a “big, beautiful wall” a centerpiece of his campaign and said Mexico would pay for it.

But border barriers extend the same 654 miles (1,046 kilometers) they did under President Barack Obama and so far Trump hasn’t gotten Mexico or Congress to pay for a new wall.

Trump also pledged to expand the Border Patrol by 5,000 agents, but staffing fell during his first year in office farther below a congressional mandate because the government has been unable to keep pace with attrition and retirements. There were 19,437 agents at the end of September, down from 19,828 a year earlier.

In Tijuana, tens of thousands of commuters still line up weekday mornings for San Diego at the nation’s busiest border crossing, some for jobs in landscaping, housekeeping, hotel maids and shipyard maintenance. The vast majority are U.S. citizens and legal residents or holders of “border crossing cards” that are given to millions of Mexicans in border areas for short visits. The border crossing cards do not include work authorization but some break the rules.

Even concern about Trump’s threat to end the North American Free Trade Agreement is tempered by awareness that border economies have been integrated for decades. Mexican “maquiladora” plants, which assemble duty-free raw materials for export to the U.S., have made televisions, medical supplies and other goods since the 1960s.

“How do you separate twins that are joined at the hip?” said Paola Avila, chairwoman of the Border Trade Alliance, a group that includes local governments and business chambers. “Our business relationships will continue to grow regardless of what happens with NAFTA.”

Workers in the Mexicali area rise about 1 a.m., carpool to the border crossing and wait about an hour to reach Calexico’s portico-covered sidewalks by 4 a.m. Some beat the border bottleneck by crossing at midnight to sleep in their cars in Calexico, a city of 40,000 about 120 miles (192 kilometers) east of San Diego. 

Fewer workers make the trek now than 20 and 30 years ago. But not because of Trump. 

Steve Scaroni, one of Imperial Valley’s largest labor contractors, blames the drop on lack of interest among younger Mexicans, which has forced him to rely increasingly on short-term farmworker visas known as H-2As. 

“We have a saying that no one is raising their kids to be farmworkers,” said Scaroni, 55, a third-generation grower and one of Imperial Valley’s largest labor contractors. Last week, he had two or three buses of workers leaving Calexico before dawn, compared to 15 to 20 buses during the 1980s and 1990s.

Crop pickers at Scaroni’s Fresh Harvest Inc. make $13.18 an hour but H-2As bring his cost to $20 to $30 an hour because he must pay for round-trip transportation, sometimes to southern Mexico, and housing. The daily border commuters from Mexicali cost only $16 to $18 after overhead.

Scaroni’s main objective is to expand the H-2A visa program, which covered about 165,000 workers in 2016. On his annual visit to Washington in February to meet members of Congress and other officials, he decided within two hours that nothing changed under Trump. 

“Washington is not going to fix anything,” he said. “You’ve got too many people – lobbyists, politicians, attorneys – who make money off the dysfunction. They make money off of not solving problems. They just keep talking about it.”

Jose Angel Valenzuela, who owns a house in Mexicali and is working his second harvest in Imperial Valley, earns more picking cabbage in an hour than he did in a day at a factory in Mexico. He doesn’t pay much attention to news and isn’t following developments on the border wall.

“We’re doing very well,” he said as workers passed around beef tacos during a break. “We haven’t seen any noticeable change.”

Jack Vessey, whose family farms about 10,000 acres in Imperial Valley, relies on border commuters for about half of his workforce. Imperial has only 175,000 people and Mexicali has about 1 million, making Mexico an obvious labor pool.

Vessey, 42, said he has seen no change on the border and doesn’t expect much. He figures 10 percent of Congress embraces open immigration policies, another 10 percent oppose them and the other 80 percent don’t want to touch it because their voters are too divided.

“It’s like banging your head against the wall,” he said. 
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U.S. President Donald Trump is blocking Singapore-based Broadcom, maker of computer and smartphone chips, from taking over U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm.

Trump cited national security grounds in stopping the takeover, following the recommendation of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The committee reviews national security implications when foreign entities purchase U.S. corporations.

The president’s order said there is “credible evidence” that the takeover “might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.”

Broadcom made an unsolicited bid last year to take over Qualcomm for $117 billion.

The company has been in the process of moving its legal headquarters from Singapore to the United States to help it win approval for the takeover.

Qualcomm, which is based in San Diego, has emerged as one of the biggest competitors to Chinese companies, such as Huawei Technologies, making it an attractive asset for potential buyers in the semiconductor industry.

Companies in the industry are racing against each other to develop 5G wireless technology to transmit data at faster speeds.
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Eurozone creditors are expected to disburse new loans to Greece this month and are working on debt relief measures, the head of the bloc’s finance ministers said on Monday, steps that should help underpin its economic recovery.

Greece’s 86-billion-euro bailout program, its third since 2010, is due to end in August and international lenders are debating how to ensure the country makes its exit on a sustainable footing.

Among options under consideration in Brussels are support measures that could run into tens of billions of euros and help ease servicing costs on a public debt pile that, in terms of economic output, is among the biggest in the world.

Greece’s economy expanded by 1.6 percent last year after emerging from a long recession. The European Commission forecast growth of 2.5 percent this year and next, but that rate could slow if reforms stall after strict monitoring by the lenders ceases.

The eurozone bailout fund is expected to pay out a 5.7 billion euro loan later in March, Eurogroup head Mario Centeno told a news conference following the finance ministers’ monthly meeting, after Greece met commitments under the third review of its rescue program.

To successfully exit the program, a fourth review of 88 reform actions must be completed before August. This would allow Greece to access other loans.

“I am confident Greece will implement all remaining deliverables to conclude the program successfully,” Centeno said.

They include new privatizations and reform of the gas and electricity markets, which he said were preconditions to granting Greece new debt relief.

Debt relief

Technical talks are already ongoing on one of the possible measures that would grant Greece additional debt relief after it benefited from extensions of its debt maturities and other short-term aid in past years.

Centeno said that work was under way on linking future eurozone debt relief to the rate of Greek economic growth, with the objective of granting support if growth slowed.

Other more substantial measures will be discussed at the next meeting of finance ministers next month, Centeno said.

Among possible measures are the use of funds that will remain unused after the bailout program ends on August 20.

This could be as mush as 27 billion euros, and could be used to buy out Greek debt falling due in the next five years and replace it with cheaper and longer-term loans from the eurozone bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM).

Another option could involve the return of profits made by the European Central Bank on Greek bonds.

Both measures would come with conditions attached, mostly linked to the implementation of reforms already approved but that would take years to fully execute.

The debate on conditionality is still wide open. Greece could ask for a new credit line after its aid programme ends, but this is likely to be seen in the country as a new wave of austerity, triggering a political backlash.

Alternatives could entail enhanced supervision by EU institutions over Greek reforms after the bailout ends.

Without a financial safety net Greece could face market pressure that would increase debt servicing costs.

Greece is also building a cash buffer, which could reach 20 billion euros, to bolster a full return to debt markets and support sustainable growth.
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Mexico’s powerful CCE business lobby on Monday urged the leftist front-runner for a July 1 presidential election to stop questioning major planks of the government’s economic agenda lest it damage investment.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has led opinion polls by a wide margin for weeks, has gradually moderated his rhetoric and his leading advisers have sought to reassure investors that he will not be an economic liability as president.

However, his threats to scrap a new Mexico City airport already under construction and review oil and gas exploration and production contracts issued under a 2013-14 energy reform still worry some investors.

“As we’ve said, you can’t ask the private sector to take part in building a better country at the same time as undermining certainty and the rule of law as conditions for fostering investment,” Juan Pablo Castanon, president of the powerful CCE lobby, an umbrella group for business groups, said at an event in Mexico City.

“For this reason, we businessfolk demand guarantees that the contracts awarded under the energy reform and for the new airport will be respected,” he added. “In a country governed by the rule of law, contracts are honored, and cannot be subject to the will or interpretation of a sitting government.”

Lopez Obrador’s top energy adviser has said that while publicly available versions of the energy contracts appear to be without problems, further investigation was needed to ensure corruption had not tainted the awarding process.

The business community was also worried there were candidates and campaign teams already casting doubt on the validity of the election “depending on who the winner is,” Castanon said, without mentioning Lopez Obrador or his MORENA party.

Castanon’s comments follow a high-profile speech by Lopez Obrador at a banking convention last week, in which he stuck to promises to not build a new airport at the current construction site and warned there could be protests if he lost by fraud.

The former mayor of Mexico City, who was runner-up in the previous two elections, organized massive protests in the capital when he was narrowly beaten for the presidency in 2006.

Two polls published last week showed him with a lead of more than 13 percentage points over his nearest rival.
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A global financial body warns central banks should carefully weigh the risks before introducing their own virtual currencies, saying such innovations could risk destabilizing banking systems and unleash disruption across borders.

But it said some forms of digital innovation could help by making trading in stocks and currencies more efficient.

Monday’s report from the Bank for International Settlements, an international organization for central banks in Basel, Switzerland, says virtual currencies issued broadly by central banks could worsen bank runs. A virtual currency could do that by making it easy to move money entirely out of the commercial banking system with a mouse click during a panic.

The report said virtual money issued by a country’s central bank could, if widely used in cross-border transactions, lead to disruptive international capital flows and exchange rate fluctuations.

The report noted that any virtual currency would have to comply with requirements aimed at stopping money laundering and financing of terrorism. That could limit how anonymous holding it could be.

The report doesn’t dismiss the idea. It said virtual currencies issued for wholesale use only — that is, by banks and financial institutions to settle payments rather than by consumers for purchases — could help make trading securities and foreign currencies more efficient.

That would not be so far from how central banks operate today. They already use money in an electronic form in the reserve accounts at the central bank that can be held only by banks and other designated financial institutions. Everyone else can access money issued by the central bank in the form of cold hard cash.

Benoit Coeure, chair of the BIS’ committee on payments and market infrastructures, said that virtual currencies issued by central banks showed promise in wholesale payments.

“Central bank digital currencies could help make settling trades of securities and foreign exchange more efficient in the future. But more work and experimentation would be needed to explore these benefits,” he said. Coeure is also a member of the executive board at the European Central Bank, the central bank for the 19-country eurozone and the issuer of the euro currency.

Coeure said that no central bank has so far decided to issue a virtual currency.

But the question has arisen in places such as Sweden, where the use of cash for everyday transactions is dwindling. Sweden’s central bank, the Rijksbank, is studying the possibility of issuing an e-krona. A decision is expected later this year or early next year. Sweden isn’t a member of the euro.

Central bankers in Europe have recently cast doubt on the usefulness of private virtual currencies such as bitcoin due to their volatility and lack of security.

“At this time, the general judgment is that their volatile valuations, and inadequate investor and consumer protection, make them unsafe to rely on as a common means of payment, a stable store of value or a unit of account,” the report said.
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Austria’s Constitutional Court on Monday dealt a blow to the government’s plans to cut benefits for groups including refugees, striking down identical rules in one province and saying refugees deserve special treatment.

Austria’s parliamentary election in October was dominated by Europe’s immigration crisis, when it took in some of the largest numbers of asylum-seekers in the European Union, relative to its population.

Conservatives led by immigration hard-liner Sebastian Kurz won and went into government with the far-right Freedom Party.

The two sides struck a coalition deal that includes reducing the main basic welfare payment for refugees to well below the standard amounts generally available. Opponents argue that refugees should be treated equally, as they still are in some provinces, including Vienna.

The court found that people granted asylum have, by definition, had to flee their home countries and cannot return.

“Those entitled to asylum cannot therefore in this context be put on the same footing as other foreigners [European Union citizens and nationals of third countries] who are free to return to their home countries,” the court said in a statement on its ruling on Lower Austria, the province that surrounds Vienna.

The government’s plans do not include capping the main benefit payment for EU citizens, which would be difficult under EU rules on freedom of movement. If refugees cannot be treated worse than EU nationals, that raises the question of whether Austria can cap refugee benefits.

The government does plan to restrict access to welfare payments for people who have lived in Austria for less than five of the past six years, as is the case in Lower Austria.

The court struck down that five-year residency requirement and a cap on the main basic welfare payment of 1,500 euros ($1,847) per family per month, which the government plans to introduce nationally.

The residency requirement’s stated objectives were to promote integration and encourage people to work. Since Austrians who have lived abroad could also fail to meet the residency requirement, the court found that it achieved neither aim, as Austrian citizens should be considered well-integrated and those who have lived abroad no less willing to work.

The government said in a statement that it respected the ruling.

“But we maintain our aim of finding a single countrywide solution that distinguishes between people who have paid into the social security system for longer and those non-Austrians who have newly arrived in the social security system,” it said, adding that a proposal would be submitted this year.
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