A top official of the Barbados Stock Exchange (BSE) has reiterated a call to Government for tax exemptions to small businesses that would encourage them to list on the junior market.
Marlon Yarde, general manager of the BSE, lamented that for some time he had been making the call but to no avail.
He was speaking on the topic, The Stock Exchange and its Advantages, during a presentation at the Financially Free seminar at Hilton Barbados last Friday.
“In the junior market, we would want to get more companies listed,” he said. “There are a lot of small entrepreneurs out there who want to raise capital . . . from the public. What we are asking, similar to what has happened in Jamaica and Trinidad, is to give companies listed in the junior market a tax holiday of up to ten years.
“The first five years would be totally tax free and then the other five years [they would pay] 50 per cent of what the normal tax rate would be.”
Yarde said the BSE would not want the companies to list only for the ten years and then delist, therefore, there would be a penalty if they did.
“We don’t want companies to stay only for the ten years and then come off. So the provision that is there is that if you come off after the ten-year period the tax benefit that you would have [received] would be called back and you would have to pay those taxes,” he said.
Yarde said this was one of the recommendations the BSE made to Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler prior to the 2011 Financial Statement and Budgetary Proposals. (MM)
