State Finance Minister the Hon. Zhivargo Laing signs TIEAs on behalf of The Bahamas Government.

The FNM government has met its pledge to The Bahamian people, meeting and

surpassing the OECD's Internationally Agreed Tax Standard, enabling The Bahamas to be removed from the OECD's grey list of tax havens.

To meet the standard, countries are required to sign a minimum of 12 Tax Information Exchange Agreements with other countries. The Bahamas has now signed 18 of those agreements.

Today in Paris, Minister of State for Finance the Hon. Zhivargo Laing signed seven of those 18 agreements. The agreements were signed with the Governments of the Nordic countries of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Green-land and the Faroes.

The OECD issued a statement on the signings today saying:

"Today's signing brings their total to 18 agreements that meet the internationally agreed tax standard. For the purposes of the progress report on the implementation of the standards, jurisdictions having signed at least 12 agreements that meet the internationally agreed tax standard are considered to have substantially implemented that standard. Accordingly, the Bahamas now moves into the substantially implemented category, becoming the 22nd jurisdiction to do so since the progress report was first issued in April 2009."

In his mid-year budget statement to Parliament, Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Hubert Ingraham said: "On April 2, 2009, The Bahamas had one agreement executed with the U.S. We have moved aggressively to meet the requirement."

Ingraham advised that by the end of March, The Bahamas will have executed 19 agreements.