Jamaica Continues Apace to Become an International Financial Service Centre
By: Ainsley Brown
I previously blogged on this when it was announced by the then Jamaica Labour Party administration and I am pleased to see that the current Peoples National Party is continuing to peruse the concept of positioning Jamaica as an international financial service centre (IFSC).
The Jamaica International Financial Service Centre (JIFSC) was created with the passage of the Jamaica International Financial Services Authority Act in February 2011. The JIFSC s’ mandate is to promote and develop Jamaica as a low-tax centre for financial services. In support of its efforts “at least seven pieces of legislation have already been drafted and are undergoing legislative review ahead of their introduction in Parliament.”
While applauding the efforts of Jamaica to position itself as an IFSC the one thing I would add is that I hope the government is looking at niche areas that Jamaica already as a strong competitive advantage and can be easily be transferred into an IFSC. Two major examples come to mind: sports and music.
Jamaica needs to create an innovative vehicle or vehicles to capitalize on its prowess in the field of sports and music. The JIFSC and the Jamaican government, in my humble opinion, should give some serious consideration to following Guernsey in creating an image rights or the right to publicity registry.
Image rights generally speaking are intellectual property rights that are intended to protect the use of a person’s name, personality, distinctiveness, likeness and even gestures. Guernsey’s law, set to become active just in time for the London Olympics, will allow sports stars and other individual that derive a considerable part of their income from the exploitation of their image to better – from a tax and asset management perspective – manage the income from their image. For example the law would allow an “image individual” to separate the income they earn directly from doing their jobs and those gained from the use of their image.
For more on image rights, stay tuned.
