Commitments to co-operate with the OECD initiative on harmful tax practices were accepted from a further five offshore financial centres in advance of the extended 28 February deadline for receiving such commitments. Other proposed commitments received by the OECD, including Gibraltar, are now under review.

The commitments were part of a process established by the OECD to promote the elimination of harmful tax practices in 35 jurisdictions identified in the OECD's 2000 Report, Towards Global Tax Co-operation as meeting the technical criteria for being a tax haven. The initiative was formally modified last November to remove the "no or nominal tax' and "no substantial activities" elements from the criteria. Commitments are now only being sought with respect to transparency and effective exchange of information.

Six jurisdictions - Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Cyprus, Malta, Mauritius and San Marino - made commitments in advance of the 2000 Report. Following publication, further commitments were made by Aruba, Bahrain, Isle of Man, Netherlands Antilles and Seychelles. Tonga was also removed from the list because it no longer met the tax haven criteria set out in the 1998 OECD report, Harmful Tax Competition: An Emerging Global Issue.

Antigua, Grenada, Guernsey, Jersey and St Vincent & The Grenadines have made commitments to improve the transparency of their tax and regulatory systems and establish effective exchange of information for tax matters with OECD countries by 31 December 2005. As a result they will not be listed as uncooperative tax havens and will be invited to participate, together with the other committed jurisdictions and OECD Member countries, in the meetings of the OECD's Global Forum to discuss the design of standards for the implementation of these and any similar commitments.

On 31 January, the OECD announced that Barbados would not appear on its forthcoming list of uncooperative tax havens because discussions had shown that Barbados has transparent tax and regulatory systems and has in place a mechanism that enables it to engage in effective exchange of information.