Colm Imbert credits PNM for EU tax delisting groundwork

Port of Spain, Feb­ru­ary 18, 2026: For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the work that led to Trinidad and To­ba­go’s re­moval from the Eu­ro­pean Union’s non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions list was com­plet­ed un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore the 28 April 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion.

In a de­tailed state­ment, Im­bert out­lined the steps tak­en to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, not­ing that shift­ing glob­al rules re­quired con­tin­u­ous strength­en­ing and ad­just­ment of lo­cal laws. “The Gov­ern­ment had to sat­is­fy the Eu­ro­pean Union’s five delist­ing cri­te­ria, each of which re­quired rig­or­ous as­sess­ment and ev­i­dence, not talk,” he said, adding that sev­er­al key pieces of leg­is­la­tion, reg­u­la­tions, guid­ance notes, and ad­min­is­tra­tive mea­sures were passed and im­ple­ment­ed to demon­strate com­pli­ance.

He high­light­ed that the EU’s cri­te­ria eval­u­ate not on­ly the ex­is­tence of laws on pa­per, but their ef­fec­tive­ness in prac­tice, of­ten re­quir­ing two to three years of im­ple­men­ta­tion, au­dits, en­force­ment ac­tiv­i­ty, and mea­sur­able out­comes. Im­bert said the PNM’s progress was slowed by op­po­si­tion re­sis­tance, in­clud­ing at­tempts to de­lay leg­is­la­tion through a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee process.

Among the Gov­ern­ment’s key achieve­ments, Im­bert point­ed to the Glob­al Fo­rum’s Sec­ond Round Phase Two on­site ex­am­i­na­tion from 21–25 Oc­to­ber 2024, which as­sessed the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to meet in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for ex­chang­ing tax in­for­ma­tion. He said the Gov­ern­ment demon­strat­ed a func­tion­ing com­pli­ance pro­gramme, in­clud­ing an­nu­al au­dit plans, com­pli­ance im­prove­ment ini­tia­tives, au­dit sta­tis­tics, and prac­ti­cal au­dit strate­gies.

Fol­low­ing the as­sess­ment, the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance met the eval­u­a­tion team on 25 Oc­to­ber 2024 to con­firm full po­lit­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive sup­port, and trav­elled to Paris the fol­low­ing week to con­tin­ue high-lev­el en­gage­ment. Trinidad and To­ba­go sub­se­quent­ly se­cured an over­all “Large­ly Com­pli­ant” rat­ing, a key step to­wards delist­ing.

On 7 No­vem­ber 2024, the Min­is­ter signed the OECD Mul­ti­lat­er­al Con­ven­tion on Mu­tu­al Ad­min­is­tra­tive As­sis­tance in Tax Mat­ters, ex­pand­ing the coun­try’s ex­change net­work from about 15 treaties to 148 part­ners. Im­bert said this demon­strat­ed mea­sur­able ac­tion sought by in­ter­na­tion­al bod­ies and the EU.

He al­so not­ed that tim­ing of as­sess­ments and re­ports of­ten lags be­hind im­ple­men­ta­tion, mean­ing that cur­rent re­ports re­flect work car­ried out well be­fore the 2025 elec­tion. “The core ac­tions that made delist­ing pos­si­ble were ex­e­cut­ed be­fore the 2025 elec­tion un­der the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, they were not achieve­ments de­liv­ered af­ter the elec­tion by the UNC,” he said.

Trinidad and To­ba­go first joined the Glob­al Fo­rum on Trans­paren­cy and Ex­change of In­for­ma­tion for Tax Pur­pos­es in 2011 and was list­ed as a non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tion by the EU in 2017 for fail­ing to meet stan­dards in­clud­ing in­for­ma­tion ex­change, harm­ful tax regimes, and Base Ero­sion and Prof­it Shift­ing re­port­ing.