Panama has been upgraded to “partially compliant” with a global tax transparency standard, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report.

OECD’s Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes (the Forum) has given six jurisdictions an overall rating of largely compliant with the OECD’s updated global standard, which incorporates beneficial ownership of all legal entities.

Andorra, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Marshall Islands, Samoa and the United Arab Emirates have demonstrated progress on the deficiencies identified in the first round of reviews and are now in line with the global standard.

Panama was rated partially compliant, having addressed some OECD recommendations since its last assessment in 2016. These included strengthening its strike-off of inactive entities, and requiring all entities to maintain accounting records.

However, it still has some further challenges to address, said the Forum. In particular, it needs to ensure the availability of accounting information to the authorities, and to strengthen its supervisory programmes to ensure this type of information is kept in practice.

The EU has also announced that it is removing Belize from the EU’s list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions.

“Belize has passed the necessary reforms to improve its tax regime for international business companies that was due to be implemented by end 2018. Belize will therefore be moved from annex I of the conclusions to annex II, pending the implementation of the country’s commitment to amend or abolish the harmful features of its foreign source income exemption regime by end 2019,” the Council said.

The Council also found the Republic of North Macedonia compliant with all its commitments on tax cooperation following its ratification of the OECD multilateral convention on mutual administrative assistance. The country was also removed from the blacklist.