Editing Economy of Dominica (section)

===Financial services===

The Commonwealth of Dominica has become in recent years a major international financial hub, and is quickly becoming one of the largest banking centres in the world, and offshore services are also becoming its main source of income. There are a number of service providers. These include global financial institutions including [[Scotiabank]], [[Royal Bank of Canada]], [[First Caribbean International Bank]];

The largest Financial sectors are "[[offshore banking]], [[payment processing]] companies, and general corporate activities". Regulation and supervision of the [[financial services]] industry is the responsibility of the [[Financial Service Unit of the Commonwealth of Dominica]] (FSU) under the supervision of the Ministry of Finance.

Starting in the mid-late 1990s, [[offshore financial centres]], such as the Commonwealth of Dominica, came under increasing pressure from the [[OECD]] for their allegedly harmful tax regimes, where the OECD wished to prevent low-tax regimes from having an advantage in the global marketplace. The OECD threatened to place the Commonwealth of Dominica and other [[financial centres]] on a "black list" and impose sanctions against them.<ref name="Rogoff">{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/schemes/cayman.html |title=Haven or havoc? |publisher=Pbs.org |access-date=2011-07-31}}</ref> However, the Commonwealth of Dominica successfully avoided being placed on the OECD blacklist by committing to regulatory reform to improve transparency and begin information exchange with OECD member countries about their citizens.<ref name="Rogoff"/>

Dominica has tried to expand its base by building up offshore financial services. So far, a relatively small number of [[offshore bank]]s and other international business companies have registered in Dominica, but the government is trying to attract more by making registration economical and easy. A Dominica-based [[International Business Company]] (IBC) can, for instance, be formed over the Internet, and the government has also granted operating licenses to several Internet gambling companies.