Countries Explore Sales of Nonfinancial Assets to Help Reduce Debt | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog

IMF Survey online

Governments across the world are exploring whether they could use their nonfinancial assets, such as land and buildings, to help ease their deficit and debt burdens. Yet according to a new IMF study, it is still unclear how much revenue the asset sales can really yield.

Wine cellar in Capian in southwestern France. In 2013 the city of Dijon in France sold off half of its municipal wine cellar to help fund social spending. (photo: Newscom)

As governments run out of ways to trim budget expenditures, many are looking for alternative ways to improve their fiscal pictures. But generating revenue from sales of nonfinancial assets tends to be more difficult than privatizing public enterprises, in particular where assets include mostly infrastructure. According to the study, options include the collection of user charges, such as road tolls, as well as streamlining public administrations and exploitation of natural resources.

The study takes stock of the nonfinancial assets held by governments in thirty-two economies. For eight advanced economies it examines to what extent these assets have been used to create new funding sources and reduce debt. The study is the first to provide such a comprehensive cross-country comparison by using data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Eurostat, national authorities, and the IMF’s own Government Finance Statistics database.

“The analysis should help government finance officials arrive at a better indicator of their governments’ net worth,” said Elva Bova, an economist with the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department and co-author of the study. “Once they have this picture, they can begin to decide things like whether to sell some of the assets, or whether they can be more efficiently managed—perhaps by leasing buildings or setting up user fees.”

Snapshot of nonfinancial assets

Nonfinancial assets, when reported, comprise mostly structures—such as roads and buildings—and land. In most cases, the value of these assets has increased over time reflecting increasing property and commodity prices in the early 2000s. Nonfinancial assets can also include a variety of other assets such as computer software, research and development, and valuables such as works of art, precious metals, and gemstones.

The levels of reported nonfinancial assets differ widely across countries, averaging 67 percent of GDP and ranging from highs around 120 percent of GDP for the Czech Republic, Japan, Korea, and Latvia, to lows near 25 percent of GDP for Bolivia, El Salvador, and Switzerland. One reason for the wide range stems from the various ways data is reported and collected—for example, only a third of countries reports the value of land. The contrast also results from differences in the structure of economies and policies on holding assets, such as the role of the public versus the private sector in providing services.

For most countries in the sample, the value of nonfinancial assets held by governments is higher than the value of financial assets (see chart), and total assets are in most cases above gross debt. For example, in Australia the higher share of nonfinancial assets is due to its large natural resource assets. However, nonfinancial assets are sometimes underestimated in official accounts if the value of natural resources is not reported in the statistics, as is the case for example in Canada.

Subnational governments hold a large portion of nonfinancial assets in many countries, with their holdings totaling more than one-half of total nonfinancial assets. The share is particularly high in federal states, like Canada, Germany, and the United States.

Using nonfinancial assets to reduce debt

Looking in more detail at eight advanced economies, the study finds that most have recently laid out strategies for improving reporting and management of nonfinancial assets. However, so far, little revenue or savings have been obtained, when compared to the size of deficits and debt.

In some cases this was related to the costs of relocating offices of the public administration when buildings were sold (France), or reduced availability of assets after earlier privatization reforms (United Kingdom), or due to large parts owned by local governments (Japan, United States). Yet, the recent sale of spectrum rights in the United Kingdom—yielding proceeds of 0.15 percent of GDP, and the 2005 introduction of a road toll for trucks in Germany—yielding annual revenues of 0.2 percent of GDP, are examples of options to create new funding sources from nonfinancial assets.

Data gaps

The IMF study is the first to report and analyze data on nonfinancial assets systematically for a wide range of countries and drawing on multiple data sources. Yet large data gaps persist. For example, only a few countries report values of land and natural resource assets. For governments to be able to make decisions about whether to sell some of their nonfinancial assets, a first step will need to be an expansion and improvement of the data collected on nonfinancial assets.

“Currently, only thirty-five countries report information on nonfinancial assets to the IMF and OECD, and this is complicated by the use of different methods in both data collection and asset valuation,” said Robert Dippelsman, an economist in the IMF’s Statistics Department and co-author of the study. “For comparability purposes, moving toward one standard reporting method along with more consistency in valuation methods would be best.”

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Jamaica:Two million stopover visitors in a calendar year | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog

Jamaica:Two million stopover visitors in a calendar year

Posted onDecember 29, 2013

Doctor’s Cave Beach Club, Montego Bay, Jamaica (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The two millionth stopover visitor for 2013 is expected to arrive in Montego Bay, St James, today on an American Airlines flight coming out of Miami, United States.

It marks the first time that Jamaica has welcomed as much as two million stopover visitors in a calendar year, the Ministry of Tourism and Entertainment said, and comes at a time when the Jamaican economy has been experiencing minimal growth.

It means that Jamaica will receive at least 13,915 more stopover visitors than last year, an increase of 0.7 per cent. That is).

According to the Economic and Social Survey 2012 published by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), Jamaica received 1,986,085 stopover visitors in 2012, a growth rate of 1.8 per cent over 2011.

The number of arrivals has been increasing steadily since 2008 when 1,767,271 arrived. More than 63 per cent of the 2012 stopover visitors came from the United States. That compared to a total of 1,951,752 in 2011 and 1,921,678 in 2010.

The numbers compare to 1,320,083 cruise passengers who arrived in 2012, an increase of 17.3 per cent over the previous year, according to the PIOJ report.

The two millionth stopover visitor, who is expected to arrive at 3:30 p.m., will be welcomed on arrival by Dr Wykeham McNeill, minister of tourism and entertainment; John Lynch, director of tourism; and Glendon Harris, mayor of Montego Bay.

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Investment and campaign to help small firms grow - Press releases - GOV.UK

Investment and campaign to help small firms grow - Press releases - GOV.UK:

Business Secretary Vince Cable today (6 November 2013) kicked off a wave of activity to boost small businesses, including unveiling the first funding allocation from the British Business Bank’s investment programme and launching a campaign to help small firms grow.

The first £45 million of funding is to be committed to Praesidian Capital Europe (£30 million) and BMS Finance (£15 million) to provide debt finance of approximately £125 million through their respective new funds. Once legal terms are agreed it is expected that both funds will start lending to small businesses in early 2014.

In addition to this, Vince Cable also set out other measures that will provide support to small businesses. These include:

• a new £1 million Sector Mentoring Challenge Fund that will enable firms to benefit from support and advice from experienced business people in their own field of work
• a £10 million synthetic biology start up fund from the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) to help entrepreneurial scientists working in synthetic biology get their business off the ground
• the successful Growth Accelerator scheme, which provides specialised coaching to small businesses with high-growth potential, will have helped 10,000 firms in the coming weeks.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said:

Today we have set out a comprehensive package of measures that will address the concerns of small firms.

The first investments from the British Business Bank’s investment programme will provide choice to smaller businesses looking to secure vital finance to help invest. Alongside cutting red tape and increasing the take up of business rate relief, government has already made significant progress in improving the business outlook for small firms and entrepreneurs.

A new business support website, www.greatbusiness.gov.uk will also make it easy to access the services and products, including Manufacturing Advice Service, National Apprenticeship Service and Growth Accelerator, that help businesses grow. The website will be supported by an advertising campaign showcasing the very best in British small businesses, to help inspire other small businesses to take steps to grow. This is the first domestic use of the GREAT campaign.

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Preparing for 2014---Is Your Business Ready? | The Guinn Consultancy Group

Preparing for 2014---Is Your Business Ready? | The Guinn Consultancy Group:

The old adage that “you get what you plan for” is often even more accurate now than it has been in the past, and we’re running out of 2013 to get both business and personal planning done for 2014.  As a matter of fact, if you’re a small business owner, and you haven’t thought about what you’re going to do with your business during 2014, you’re behind the curve in the time required to get it accomplished.

We’re firm believers that you need to have a business plan that includes marketing objectives and employee targets–and it needs to be completed and ready for implementation by the first of each new year.  Otherwise, you’re not really running the business—you’re letting the business run you.

Now, we’re fairly certain that most business owners want to feel as though they manage what happens to them. And  we’ve seen too many clients that thought they knew everything about their business—from the backgrounds of the employees to the primary, secondary and even tertiary level suppliers, to having thought through what they might do if an employee leaves—or if they are forced to create an opening.

Let’s think about manpower planning. Too often, employee departures aren’t planned.  An employee may find a better job that pays more, or has better benefits, or where they know the owner or a group of employees, and “presto”—they may be giving you two weeks notice, or they may just be calling in and saying, “Goodbye, loser.”

It’s true.  Some situations you simply can’t plan for.  But the ones that you can plan for—if you don’t have a plan, and you consider yourself a responsible business owner—need to be addressed.

And in thinking about marketing, every year, we reassess what we think a business should spend on marketing.  In 2014, there are some significant issues that are going to be impacting sales and will create both some significant marketing opportunities and some difficulties.

First, the roll-out of Obamacare.  This has many impacts on small business, not the least of which, a direct impact on small business marketing.  So some of our clients are saying, why, marketing?   Simple answer.  Marketing is the business discipline that helps you create top of mind awareness with your clients, patients, or customers.  It is the direct link between the stakeholder thought process of, “Hey, I want X” and the thought that “Hey, XYZ business can furnish me with X.”  But things get in the way of that thought process.  Your need for specific pricing can get in the way. The perceived value held by the customer, client or patient can get in the way. Knowledge that another product is available that is superior to what you are offering can interfere.  The value perception that what you are offering may not meet the need the customer, client, or patient requires can be an issue.  All of these can be seriously impacted by the amount of money your customer has to pay for the service or product they need.

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Tax policy analysis - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Tax policy analysis - Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development:

New OECD data in the annual Revenue Statistics publication show that tax revenues as a percentage of GDP continue to recover gradually from the falls in almost all countries in 2008 and 2009 that stemmed from the financial and economic crisis. The average tax to GDP ratio in OECD countries was 34.6 per cent [1] in 2012 compared with 34.1 per cent in 2011 and 33.8 per cent in 2010. This is still below the most recent peak year of 2007 when tax revenues to GDP ratios averaged 35.0 per cent (Table A, Table 2)

• Denmark had the highest tax to GDP ratio in 2012 (48.0 per cent) and Mexico the lowest (19.6 per cent).
• Of the 30 countries for which data for 2012 are available the ratio of tax revenues to GDP compared to 2011 rose in 21 and fell in only 9.
• Between 2011 and 2012, the largest tax ratio increases were in Hungary (1.8 percentage points explained by both taxes on goods and services and taxes on income) and in Greece (1.6 primarily due to higher taxes on income as a percentage of GDP).  Other countries with substantial rises in their tax to GDP ratio between 2011 and 2012 were Italy and New Zealand (1.4 percentage points), Belgium, Iceland and France (1.2).
• The largest fall in the tax ratio between 2011 and 2012 was in Israel with a decline of one percentage point from 32.6 per cent to 31.6 per cent, driven largely by a reduction in taxes on goods and services as a share of GDP.  Portugal and the United Kingdom showed falls of 0.5 percentage points.
• Compared with 2007 (pre-recession) tax to GDP ratios, the ratio in 2012 was still down by more than three percentage points in four countries (Iceland , Israel, Spain and Sweden).  The biggest fall has been in Israel, from 36.4 per cent in 2007 to 31.6 per cent of GDP in 2012.
• The tax burden in Turkey increased from 24.1 per cent to 27.7 per cent between 2007 and 2012.  Four other countries (Belgium, France, Luxembourg and Mexico) showed increases of more than 1.5 percentage points over the same period. 

The latest year for which tax to GDP ratios are based on final revenue data and available for all OECD countries is 2011 (Chart A). These data show that tax ratios vary considerably across countries.

• In 2011, Denmark had the highest tax to GDP ratio (47.7 per cent), followed by, Sweden, Belgium and France.
• In contrast, ten countries - Australia, Chile, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Slovak Republic, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States - had tax ratios of below 30 per cent.
• Mexico had the lowest ratio at 19.7 per cent followed by Chile at 21.2 per cent.
• The tax ratio in the OECD area as a whole (un-weighted average) rose by 0.3 percentage points from 2010 to 34.1 per cent in 2011. (Table A).
• Relative to 2010, overall tax ratios rose in 24 OECD member countries and fell in 9.
• The largest increases in the ratio were in Portugal (1.8 percentage points), Chile (1.7) and Turkey (1.6).
• Four other countries – the Czech Republic, Finland, France and Japan – saw increases of one percentage point or more between 2010 and 2011.
• The largest reductions were in Estonia (1.7 percentage points), Sweden (1.2) and Slovenia (1.0).

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Risk management can be a powerful instrument for development | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog

Risk management can be a powerful instrument for development | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog:

The path of economic development is paved with risks and opportunities. On the one hand, facing risk is a difficult challenge; on the other, the opportunity for growth and welfare improvement may never materialize without confronting and even taking risks. This is true for individuals, families, enterprises, and nations.

The World Development Report (WDR) 2014 examines how improving risk management can lead to larger gains in development and poverty reduction. It will argue that improving risk management is crucial to reduce the negative impacts of shocks and hazards, but also to enable people to pursue new opportunities for growth and prosperity. Risk management is also a shared responsibility that requires the active participation of different economic and social systems, as well as the State.Report

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A World Free of Poverty: Ending Extreme Poverty and Promoting Shared Prosperity | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog

A World Free of Poverty: Ending Extreme Poverty and Promoting Shared Prosperity | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog:

Over the past three decades, the extent of global poverty has declined
rapidly. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty in 2013 is
less than half of what it was in 1990. Based on this trend, it is possible
to envision a world in which extreme poverty has effectively been
eliminated within a generation. Yet today, more than 1 billion people
worldwide are still destitute, inequality and social exclusion seem to be
rising in several countries, and many urgent and complex challenges must
be overcome to maintain the recent momentum in poverty reduction.
In this context, the World Bank Group has established ambitious but
achievable goals on which to anchor its work in meeting these historic
challenges. Specifically, the institution will strive to end extreme
poverty at the global level by 2030 and to promote shared prosperity in
developing countries, which will entail fostering income growth for the
bottom 40 percent of the population. This effort will involve investing in
opportunities for all citizens and reducing inequality, which are integral
to creating prosperity and sustaining economic growth. These goals will
be pursued in an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable
manner to ensure that development gains do not harm the welfare of
current and future generations.
This Annual Report focuses on the work of the International Bank
for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International
Development Association (IDA), collectively known as the World Bank.
We encourage you to read this report to learn more about the Bank’s
work—the activities and outcomes it supports in the six regions in which
it works, and the results of that work in helping to overcome poverty and
create opportunities for people in developing countries.poverty report

Latin America: Entrepreneurs’ lack of innovation curbs creation of quality jobs | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog

Latin America: Entrepreneurs’ lack of innovation curbs creation of quality jobs | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog:

Latin American firms develop new products less frequently than their counterparts in other developing regions. In fact, in Ecuador, Jamaica, Mexico and Venezuela this rate of product development is less than half than that of Thailand or Macedonia. Consequently, this lack of innovation harms competitivity and slows growth and rebounds on quality job creation – a significant development challenge, especially in Central America.

Possible reasons are four-fold:

• Human capital: Science and technology graduates and engineers are at a premium in Latin America and it’s a scarcity that has a direct effect on innovation. In fact, Scup co-founder Daniel Heise admitted he has been trying to fill ten positions for around a year, but with little success. Closely related to the quality of education, the report recognizes this will be a major challenge for the region.
• Intellectual property: With separate laws governing copyright in every country, ensuring intellectual property rights can be a significant bureaucratic undertaking for the region’s entrepreneurs. The complicated panorama lends less protection to the product creators, deterring much needed investment for new product research and development.
• Risk taking: No-one likes to fail, but in Latin America a deep cultural shame of failure is hindering innovation by dissuading entrepreneurs from taking risks. This is evident as much in individual reticence at a business level as in the low levels of investment in research and development, especially from the private sector.
• Logistics: Modernizing ports, transport, and customs can add a competitive edge to products from the region. Currently, poor public services, communication links and transport infrastructure are adding to the obstacles to boosting production capacity in the region.

Quality job creation

Launching the report in Miami, De la Torre proposed that size isn’t always the best marker for growth potential and quality job creation. In fact, ‘multinational’ firms based in Latin America far less dynamic than their offices outside of Latin America and the region’s ‘multilatina’ companies are also suffering from an innovation deficit.

Instead, it is more helpful to consider businesses, whether they be small, medium or large, in terms of their age. In all cases, younger firms far outshone more established ones in terms of job creation. The key, therefore, is to identify early on which startups have the most potential and the support their growth through start up programs, subsidies, business expansion support programs or policy as necessary.

Entrepreneurs are key actors in turning low productivity around to create quality jobs and lasting economic benefit for the region. Consequently the report recommends establishing an economic environment which enables them to innovate and compete, thereby reducing the grip of monopolies, increasing productivity and diversifying the business environment.

“It is about building an innovative entrepreneurial class in which top-notch firms—firms that export goods, services, and even capital—no longer look tepid in contrast to entrepreneurial superstars elsewhere,” the report concludes.  see Report

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A Billion-dollar Opportunity for Developing Countries | Growth and Crisis

A Billion-dollar Opportunity for Developing Countries | Growth and Crisis:

The decision last week by the Swiss government to sign the OECD’s somewhat lengthily named Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters is the latest of a series of developments that have radically increased the amount and quality of tax information available to governments. For developing countries, being able to access and use that information to address tax avoidance could mean billions of dollars in increased revenue, particularly in the extractives sector. However, these countries are often not able to make full use of tax information sharing agreements. Within the existing treaty framework, wealthier countries can reserve the right not to share information with weak tax administrations in developing countries, citing concerns about confidentiality and data protection. So far, few developing countries have joined the OECD convention, which in November 2011 was opened to countries outside the OECD and the Council of Europe. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only Ghana has ratified it, with South Africa and Nigeria having signed but not yet ratified. If joining the convention, developing countries are unlikely to benefit unless they also strengthen tax administrations, gaining full access to information by assuaging concerns regarding data protection, and developing the capacity of large taxpayer units to efficiently exploit newly available tax information. To be credible participants in mutual information sharing agreements, developing countries must also be able to generate domestic tax data that is of interest to partner countries.
 
Staggering fiscal losses
 
Switzerland, whose financial sector manages $2.2 trillion of offshore assets according toBoston Consulting Group, happens to be one of the main global transaction hubs for the oil, gas and mining sector, which in many developing countries dominates production and exports. Companies in this sector, it has been claimed, frequently dodge billions of dollars in taxes payable to developing countries by shifting profits to low-tax jurisdictions.
 
Due to the complexity of tax instruments used to avoid taxes, and historical secrecy of transactions in the extractives sector, reliable numbers for tax avoidance are hard to come by. However, existing estimates provide staggering figures for fiscal losses incurred by developing countries. According to one widely cited estimate, African countries annually lose $38 billion to abusive transfer pricing, one of the main forms of profit shifting. To place that figure in context, it slightly exceeds the flow of development assistance to the continent. Other estimates suggest annual losses from corporate tax avoidance for developing countries range from $98bn to $160bn.
 
Starbucks driving the agenda on oil and mining tax transparency
 
The decision by Switzerland to share tax information, which still has to be ratified, is the latest addition to radically increased transparency of tax information over the last five years. This development, while principally affecting international transactions, has largely been driven by public outcry in national constituencies. In 2008, tax avoidance helped by secret bank accounts in Lichtenstein caused widespread indignation in Germany, generating pressure for increased openness. This year, prompted by public uproar over Starbucks’ and several other multinationals’ almost complete avoidance of UK taxes over several decades, the UK used its G8 presidency to bring tax avoidance to the top of the global policy agenda. In the extractives sector, additional progress on transparency has been made by the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), which requires governments and companies to publish data on taxes and royalties from oil, gas and mining operations. Many countries have also strengthened their extractives tax codes.
 
The mechanics of extractives tax avoidance

 
Companies have a number of tax planning opportunities available to artificially reduce profits, obscure ownership, or outright evade tax. Transfer pricing refers to the pricing of goods and services traded within the same company, or groups of related companies. As prices for intra-company trade are not set by the market, these prices can be artificially inflated to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions. Profit shifting can involve the leasing of machinery and sale of services from shell companies in low-tax jurisdictions, or intra-company lending and insurance provision at artificially high interest rates or premiums. Increased transparency on bearer shares, the physical documents that confer ownership of companies, as well as more mandated information sharing, will help tax administrators sift through corporate networks frequently consisting of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of affiliates and related shell companies that trade between themselves
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CTO wants region promoted as single destination - Business - Jamaica Gleaner - Wednesday | December 18, 2013

CTO wants region promoted as single destination - Business - Jamaica Gleaner - Wednesday | December 18, 2013:

A cruise ship at the Falmouth Pier. - File

The Barbados-based Caribbean Tourism Organi-zation (CTO) will next month celebrate its 25th anniversary amid a call for the region to be promoted as a single destination.

CTO chairman, Beverly Nichol-son Doty, in a Christmas message, said that her wish for the sector in 2014 was that Caribbean countries commit themselves to promoting the region as one destination.

She said she was also hoping that Caribbean countries would each commit a percentage of their annual tourism budgets towards the marketing of a strong Caribbean brand "so that the Caribbean Tourism Development Company, which we own jointly with the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association, can bolster our campaign for the region's benefit".

Nicholson Doty said, "There is a major opportunity awaiting us in both traditional and emerging markets. At the recent State of the Industry Conference in Martinique, we learned much of what we need to do to successfully pursue new sources of business while also solidifying our mainstay markets."

She applauded those destinations which have begun to invest in language training and long haul airlift in preparation for new visitors in 2014.

Nicholson Doty said that she was also hoping that in 2014, the region would address the onerous taxes that suffocate the sector.

"While we will not soften our stance on requesting the British authorities to address the Air Passenger Duty in a manner that is equitable, we cannot ignore the effects some of our own tax regimes are having on intra-regional travel," she added

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Vintage rum fetches millions - Business - Jamaica Gleaner - Wednesday | December 18, 2013

Vintage rum fetches millions - Business - Jamaica Gleaner - Wednesday | December 18, 2013:

Ortanique rum punch

Richard Browne, Business Reporter

A dozen bottles of vintage rum more than 230 years old and believed by auction house, Christie's, to be from Barbados, have sold at auction in London for on average £6,500 (J$1.1 million) per bottle, several times more than their expected sale price.

The sale price almost tripled the price of a bottle of Appleton 50-year old rum.

The bottles were found in 2011 in a cellar at Harewood House, a manor near Leeds, West Yorkshire in England. The 12 bottles were expected to sell for a total of about £12,000 (J$2 million), but instead fetched £78,255 (J$13 million).

Harewood House was built by Barbadian-born landowner, Edwin, Lascelles, in the 18th century from a fortune made in the West Indian sugar trade. Part of that wealth was invested in estates in Jamaica, Barbados, Grenada and Tobago.

David Elswood, international director of Christie's Wine in Europe and Asia, said in a news release, "We are thrilled with the results of today's sale of the 1780 Harewood Rum. The 12 bottles of dark and light rum sold for a total of £78,255, making it both the oldest and most valuable rum ever sold at auction by Christie's."

The five bottles of dark rum fetched the top price, selling for £8,225 (J$ 1.4 million), each

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UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants

UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants

bcg.perspectives - The Future Is Scary. Thinking Creatively Can Help.

bcg.perspectives - The Future Is Scary. Thinking Creatively Can Help.:

Thinking creatively about the future requires sensitivity to the complex, fast-moving world in front of you, the ability to anticipate unexpected disruptions, and a willingness to constantly reevaluate your most basic beliefs and assumptions. Done well, we believe thinking creatively about the future of organizations requires doing three things:

First, understand how people think.

The brain’s hard-wiring could be leading you and your colleagues to hold on to tired assumptions and misperceptions about your organization. People have a naturalbias toward ideas and concepts that confirm, as opposed to contradict, ideas they already believe. Such biases can sabotage their capacity for fresh thinking.

A classic example: Henry Ford famously insisted that the all-black Model T would always remain desirable to consumers. Even as other automakers created new car models and colors, even when his colleagues urged him to consider pursuing new directions, Ford refused to budge. After years of fantastic innovations that helped bring the automobile to the masses, Ford fell prey to the “anchoring” bias that leads people to make (or fail to make) new decisions by referencing their prior experiences.

Free your mind to generate new ideas by noticing how these and other cognitive patterns may be shaping your key assumptions and holding you back from thinking in more creative ways.

When thinking about the future of your organization, you and your colleagues must feel encouraged to doubt whether “the way we do things here at X Corp.” is necessarily still relevant. Insist upon a culture that allows people to constantly challenge the most fundamental beliefs, hypotheses, and assumptions that they have about your organization, the industry in which it does business, and the world in which it operates.

Second, think creatively by developing new mental models; audit—and then question—your organization’s fundamental beliefs and assumptions.

To think creatively is to change the way you look at something, to update one or more of your mental models. To get started, drill down on some of the most important mental models that you and your colleagues are currently using. Consider conducting a “beliefs audit.” By interviewing or surveying your colleagues, you can probe their thoughts about your organization’s current situation:

• What are some key assumptions inherent in your day-to-day activities? The established “rules” under which you or your organization generally operates? What core values are “given”?

• What are some of your own personal beliefs about your organization and what makes it perform effectively at present? In what areas does your organization devote too much—or too little—time and resources?

• What is your organization’s competitive space, and are there ways it might be redefined?

• If you or your organization didn’t exist, what difference would it make to the world? What would be missing?

These are only sample questions—you should develop others based on the current needs of your organization.

Questioning your current situation can open up paths to creative thinking. For instance, Google’s original aspiration was to build the best search engine ever; arguably the organization achieved that. But in order to enter a new era of growth, Google leaders needed to perceive their company differently. Only when they challenged their long-held assumption that “We are a search engine company” could they then come up with the “We want to know everything” notion, which sparked projects such as Google Earth, Google Book Search, and Google Labs, along with further improvements to their fabled search engine.

Third, think creatively about the future by using “prospective thinking” to consider key trends and disruptions.

Take an expansive, long-term view, open to all possibilities and fully aware of what’s happening both within and outside of your organization or your immediate environment.

Megatrends, large social, economic, political, environmental, or technological changes likely to have major impact across a wide range of areas, can be a very useful tool to help spark new possibilities.

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Working Capital Management explained.

Registration Of Overseas Companies in Jamaica | UHY Dawgen Chartered Accountants Blog

December 15, 2013

By virtue of Part X of the Companies Act of Jamaica 2004, companies incorporated
outside of the island that have established a place of business within the island,
should, within one month of such establishment, register with the Registrar of
Companies. Such registration entails submitting the following
information/documents:
1. A certified copy of the constituting instrument of the company (articles,
charter, statutes etc.) which must contain the name of the company.
2. A list of the directors of the company

3. The name(s) and address(es) of a resident(s) of the Island authorized to
receive service of documents on behalf of the company.

When any alterations are made to any of the above information/documents, the
company must notify the Registrar within 21 days by delivering for registration a
return containing the prescribed particulars of the alteration.

It must be made clear that this process is a mere registration of an overseas company
having an established place of business in Jamaica and it is not incorporation of a
branch of the overseas company or of a separate company altogether. The
information on the Register of Companies in Jamaica pertaining to any overseas
company must therefore reflect the information on the record in the company’s
country of incorporation (except of course, the locally appointed authorized agent for
the purpose of accepting service). For instance, a director who is not appointed to the
company in its country of origin cannot then be appointed to the Register in Jamaica
because the entity in Jamaica does not have an existence outside of its original
incorporation. It will soon be a strictly enforced policy at the Companies Office of
Jamaica that any notification to the Registrar of alterations to the records of an
overseas company must be substantiated by a certified copy of the document proving
such alteration.

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USAID now focusing on housing finance in Haiti - Business - JamaicaObserver.com

USAID now focusing on housing finance in Haiti - Business - JamaicaObserver.com:

The US Agency for International Development will shift from building houses to financing them for people displaced by the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the agency's chief for the Caribbean nation said Monday.

Mission director John Groarke said the agency will try to help people build their own homes through mortgages.

US Agency for International Development Mission Director to Haiti John Groarke speaks during an interview at the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Monday. (PHOTO: AP)  1/1

"There was definitely a shift, because USAID began to realise that building houses here is very complicated," Groarke said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We feel that we can reach and help more people through creative financing."

An October report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticised the USAID effort to provide housing as part of the Caracol Industrial Park, which is the United States' biggest investment in Haiti since the quake destroyed thousands of homes and displaced 1.5 million people.

The number of people still living in grim encampments of quake survivors is now at 170,000, the International Organisation for Migration says. Many Haitians left the camps not because new housing became available but because they received rental subsidies or were evicted by landowners.

USAID had aimed to build 15,000 houses but now plans to build only 2,649, the report said.

The GAO report raised questions about the efficacy and the future of the US$300 -million Caracol Industrial Park. The US has invested more than US$124 million in it.

Backers say that once completed, the facility will create 20,000 to 65,000 much-needed jobs, but only 1,450 Haitians have been hired so far, the GAO report said.

There are only three tenants, but Groarke said a fragrance company and a personal-care products company are likely to move in soon.

"I don't think anybody would've realistically expected that there would be a lot of tenants moving in right away," Groarke said.

Groarke said the US Army Corps of Engineers recently hired an engineer to oversee construction of a port to serve the industrial park.

The new port near Caracol is vital to the project's success, in part because the tenants have had to use a more costly port in the neighbouring Dominican Republic and a smaller one in the nearby city of Cap-Haitien.

A new port will cost between US$185 million and US$257 million, the GAO report said. USAID officials hope someone in Haiti's private sector will pitch in to help cover the costs, but Groarke said no one had yet done so.

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/business/USAID-now-focusing-on-housing-finance-in-Haiti_15632313#ixzz2nOphHEh3
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Channeling Caribbean diaspora dollars back home | Latin America & Caribbean: Opportunities for All

Channeling Caribbean diaspora dollars back home | Latin America & Caribbean: Opportunities for All:

“We have the money, but it’s just not that easy to find the deals back home.” These words, from a Barbadian entrepreneur in Silicon Valley tell the story of a successful tech entrepreneur whose family left the Caribbean almost a generation ago. They moved to the USA and over the years he was able to build a successful business based in Northern California.

Today, he looks back home in search for talent that could benefit from the financing and advice he can provide as a business angel investor. He went further to suggest that over the next five years, his investments in Caribbean startups could reach half a million dollars if the deals were right.

This individual is not alone. Over the course of three months, we met with 220 members of the Caribbean diaspora in New York, Toronto, London, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. In addition, we received responses to an online survey from 636 others individuals, collectively claiming their origins in every single nation of the Caribbean.

Our intention in conducting the study was to better understand the business and investment interests of the Caribbean diaspora and to use these findings to design a program that would make it easier for these diaspora dollars to flow back home. Through the study we found the diaspora to have a tremendous interest in making such investments and contributing to the development story of their countries of origin.

More than 85 percent of the respondents to our survey indicated that they already give back to the Caribbean in some way, shape, or form. Besides the consistent flow of remittances and charitable giving, private sector investments are becoming a strong pull for the diaspora - one in four diaspora members invests in real estate and one in ten invests in a business venture of some form in the Caribbean.

In general, diaspora members favored start-ups over small and medium enterprises or established public companies. In fact, 23 percent of diaspora members have made investments in new or early-stage ventures in the Caribbean.

Among just the 850 diaspora members we engaged in the study, a pool of about $3.5 million dollars is available over the next five years for investments in early-stage startups in the Caribbean, seeding at least 25 startups across the region. When considering the full scale of the diaspora – beyond those individuals engaged in our study – this figure would easily increase many multiples.

The willingness and ability of the diaspora to engage represents a significant untapped potential for Caribbean nations. While the money is out there, creating avenues for these funds to flow back home and ensuring that the regulatory environment for businesses is conducive to receiving such investments remains a challenge. Interventions such as the Entrepreneurship Program for Innovation in the Caribbean are trying to create such avenues and reduce transaction costs.

The impact of increasing diaspora investments will be nothing less than a tremendous boost for innovation, technology and entrepreneurship in the Caribbean as a whole, not to mention the impact they will have on job creation and economic growth.

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