Permanent Secretary Kevin Hunte stood in front of reporters on September 24 and admitted something officials rarely admit out loud. The new Beneficial Ownership, Transparency and Register Act isn’t landing the way his ministry hoped.
The law itself is simple enough to state in one breath. Every company registered in Barbados, not just the international ones, has to identify who actually owns and controls it, file that information, and keep it updated every year. Skip the November deadline and the consequences escalate from fines to getting struck off the register altogether.
Hunte didn’t open with the penalties, though. He opened with a plea, and he dropped into Bajan to make sure it landed: “Guh back to yuh office and check.” Director of the International Business Unit Sangene Watkins-Diagne followed with the uncomfortable part. Small companies, the ones earning under BDS$1 million, are responding slower than the ministry wants, even with free staff on hand at Business Barbados walking owners through the filing.
The actual holdup isn’t confusion about beneficial ownership at all. It’s that some small businesses are behind on their annual returns and assume that blocks them from filing this too. Watkins-Diagne was clear it doesn’t, and that owners shouldn’t let one lapse stall the other.
Hunte’s real audience wasn’t the barbershop owner in the room. It was the correspondent bank in Brussels and the investor in Toronto deciding whether Barbados actually knows who sits on its own register. “Compliance and competitiveness are not rivals,” he said. “They are mutually reinforcing pillars.”
Nice line. Whether it gets a small business owner to actually file before November is a separate question, and the ministry’s own numbers say the answer right now is still no.
— SS
Stephen Stanberry
