Tax the tax havens says regional president
(CNS): Dominican Republic President Leonel Fernández has called on the United Nations General Assembly to introduce a tax on tax havens, off-shore banks and international financial centres to make up for the damage the global economic crisis has had on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), according to a UN release. Statistics from the World Health Organisation suggest that an additional 400,000 children and tens of thousands of women will die each year because of the global financial crisis, and Fernández called on the Assembly to declare “a state of emergency”.
“The onlyway to really tackle achieving the MDG by the scheduled date of 2015 is for this General Assembly to help create the conditions for a real commitment by nations, governmental and non-governmental institutions to assume as a matter of urgency the tasks of economic and social development for peoples stricken by poverty, hunger, sickness and illiteracy,” he said.
The MDGs seek to slash a list of other ills in the developing world by 2015 and Fernandez noted the human cost of the financial meltdown. “Just today, while this session of the General Assembly of the most important organization in the world is being held, 25,000 children will die in various parts of the planet,’ he said. “That means that one child dies every three seconds and 18 children every minute. At the end of my 15-minute speech before this plenary, 270 children whose deaths could have been avoided will have died.”
Fernández called on the 192-member body to consider new possible funding sources for the MDGs, proposing that a working group be set up to present an action plan for his suggested tax on tax havens.
“It cannot be argued that there are not sufficient resources to confront this huge task (of funding the MDGs),” he declared. “The diligent way in which the collapse of the international financial system has been addressed show us something that has always been on the lips of the people, that ‘when there’s a will, there’s a way’."
He said, “There are abundant resources in the world. What is happening is that they are distributed unequally and unjustly, and this is due, among other reason, to the existence of a global financial architecture prone to lack of transparency, secrecy, withholding of capital, evasion and fraud.”
“The only way to really tackle achieving the MDGs by the scheduled date of 2015 is for this General Assembly to help create the conditions for a real commitment by nations, governmental and non-governmental institutions to assume as a matter of urgency the tasks of economic and social development for peoples stricken by poverty, hunger, sickness and illiteracy,” he said.
Category: World News
He can be a dictator in is own country, but not in mine!
i agree with you denny stand up for our country we are the only few natives left here the rest of them are invaders
Yes they should just shut down all of the Govt projects, and take a breather and get updated accounts to show where we are and how we got there, then decide where we want to go. Increasing taxes will finish kill the economy.
that is true very intelligent taughts can you please propose them to mckeeva b4 he ruin our little island with his dumb ideas
Why I’m I not surpised by the Prez of DR, he is another Castro/Chevez that wants to hold on to powerforever. Start paying your bills and stop increasing tax in the DR on everything, you could start by fixing the electricity problems! (some folks in the DR are lucky if they get 3 good hours of electricity on any given day. Stop looking for the outside world to solve your problems, we here in Cayman are a dependecy of the UK, but will operated as if we are independent, start doing the same and stop begging for your people.
Do you really think London (England), New York (USA), Singapore and Hong Kong (China) will tax themselves?! Not to mention Switzerland and all the overnight OFCs.
Wow…he used his 15 mins of fame and he was a sparkler…fizzled and extinguished.
It may have escaped your notice but the OECD and its followers distinguish between "tax havens" – which will always include Cayman in their eyes, and their own, irrespective of the recent distracting foolishness about different coloured lists. New York, London, Switzerland etc were never on the OECD tax haven lists even they do what we do. Cayman will dismiss this issue at its peril – which probably means that it will given events of recent months.
Fair enough. However, I am trying to wrap my head around the link between Belize President and that of Brown and Obama?
is he family to mckeeva or what?
I think he is Bruce Goldings twin and Big Macks half.
im laughing cant stop mckeeva and bruce look alike
I guess he did not catch Tony on London AM and unfortunately everyone forgot to ask him to address the UN. Don’t get me wrong, I think that Tony is trying.
The problem is that the efforts of government (if this government is actually doing anything) and CIFSA are completely misdirected if they are actually trying to influence the people who actually make the decisions. I understand that they have experts on creating local spin but that just does not cut it.
The level of Fire Ready Aim should be obvious to everyone with the "we will tax, we will not tax, we will tax" incoherent babble that is coming from the LOGB. They have no clue what they are doing.
i agree with you they dont know what they are doing
I agree.