Government has pledged to make the International Monetary Fund's report on Bermuda public, stating it is a "jurisdiction committed to transparency".

The report, which has seen the Island scrutinised once again by foreign bodies, has been carried out over the past two years and is expected to be finished shortly.

The officials from the IMF are currently in a series of discussions with the Bermuda Monetary Authority before the report is finalised and then published.

Yesterday Minister of Finance Paula Cox pledged to make the report public by presenting it to the House of Assembly and releasing it to the Press.

"There has been a request by the IMF for all jurisdictions that have participated in the IMF Offshore Financial Centres Assessment Programme to commit to publish their assessment reports and we have signalled our willingness to publish the finalised report," said Ms Cox.

In a release she said that when the finalised report is published Government will make the report available to local media and table the report in Parliament and was doing so because it was committed to transparency.

Government came under criticism during its first term for not publishing the annex to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

This led to fears from business and the opposition that Bermuda had signed away some of her rights in a bid not to be put on a black list of so-called "tax-havens".

But while the previous Minister of Finance, the late Eugene Cox, refused to bow to pressure to publish the document, he said that Bermuda's rights were still intact.

His critics never believed him and to this day there is a suspicion that Government signed away some of its rights ? which is why the annex was never published.

Little is known about the IMF report and what it might contain, but earlier this year Ms Cox said that Bermuda will face further regulatory changes when the IMF's 2003 review is published.

But as the report has not yet been published, the Minister said she could not be more specific on what those changes would be at a Press conference following the Budget.

She said during the Budget that Government was transferring $3.5 million to the Bermuda Monetary Authority to make it more independent following the International Monetary Fund's 2003 Review.

Ms Cox said: "The decision on this matter was reached in December 2003 following consultations between the BMA and the Ministry of Finance on the likely implications of the International Monetary Fund's March 2003 review of Bermuda's supervisory and regulatory framework for the financial services sector."

Ms Cox said that Bermuda's success as an international business jurisdiction had attracted the attention of supra-national bodies such as the International Monetary Fund.

"You may recall, that the IMF conducted an assessment of Bermuda's financial service supervisory and regulatory regimes in March 2003," she said in the Budget. "The finalisation of the Report is on-going but there are clear signals for some further changes and enhancements to our supervisory and regulatory processes."