27.07.2009 

Seychelles economy is quite well developed, taxation law professor Lee Burns told several hundred people who attended a presentation he gave at the Seychelles Trading Company’s conference room on Friday.

“Many of your sectors – for example tourism – are well developed and better than for many island states in the Pacific, he told the audience who included cabinet ministers, politicians, businessmen, government officials, bankers, other representatives of the private sector and members of the public.

He said our economy is mature enough to deal with the globalisation of our economy and managing the change is an important thing that both the private and the public sectors will have to do. He said it was a very good decision to put a new tax system in place.

Professor Burns is the dean of the faculty of law at Sydney University and an expert on taxation in small island economies. He has helped draft tax laws in over 20 countries including Mauritius, Pakistan, Uganda, Rwanda and Lesotho.

He is also part of the International Monetary Fund’s technical assistance progamme and is now helping to design and draft our new tax laws which are part of the IMF-led reforms we launched in November.

He said the talk helped those present to better understand how Seychelles taxation fits in with the global economy now that we are doing the reforms.

“A lot of the reforms are being driven by external factors and it is important we understand what these external factors are. What I’ve done is put the reforms into a broader context,” he said adding globalisation changes the things that a country can tax. “You need to think what is going to be more effective in your tax system. Seychelles relies heavily on trade taxes and if those are going to be reduced then the revenue will have to be made from somewhere so you need to find new revenue sources.”

He said capital can move into or out of a country very quickly depending on economic and especially political stability
Prof Burns said he was very happy to see so many people attending the presentation and that showed “so many people are interested in what is happening here now”.

Forrás: http://www.nation.sc/