Bermuda is making progress protecting its international business sector and overall reputation, Finance Minister Paula Cox told the International Chartered Accountants of Bermuda (ICAB) yesterday, before she announced last night that Bermuda had concluded negotitaions with Japan on its 16th tax information exchange agreement (TIEA).

This progress is the "good news" of a "severely challenging economic time" marked by lay-offs, bank closures overseas, plummeting tourism figures in Bermuda and collapsing mega-companies worldwide.

In this turbulent climate, the Minister said the Island should be proud of being the first country to be moved off the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's "grey list" onto the "white list". The OECD moved Bermuda onto the list of countries with better tax scrutiny rankings two weeks ago. The boost put Bermuda in the company of such nations as Australia, Argentina and the British Crown dependencies and ahead of rival jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Switzerland and Turks and Caicos, she noted.

To achieve the move, Bermuda signed 12 TIEAs with various nations and Minister Cox said the Island will continue to work on more agreements through bilateral, face-to-face meetings.

"Reaching 12 is not a job done," she said. (The Island has actually completed negotiations with 16 countries.) "Our goal is to achieve TIEAs with all of the G7 countries and with important trading nations. We will continue to raise the bar and the Ministry of Finance will continue to tell Bermuda's story."

The white list move was a proud moment for Bermuda, she said, indicative of its "audacity of hope" and "stick-to-it-ness". The Minister said this jurisdiction shines in solving problems quickly and striving to meet high international standards, making it more attractive than rival jurisdictions.

"The others have to follow our lead, that is a coup," she said. The Minister highlighted the recent TIEA negotiations with Japan, which was that country's first such agreement.

She said the Japanese delegation had praised Bermuda for its cooperative approach. Alternatively, she noted, Switzerland which has yet to sign a single TIEA has been saying at recent OECD meetings that they are finding the Japanese difficult to deal with in their attempts to secure an agreement. "It depends on perspective," the Minister said. With Bermuda now on the white list, the Island is able to negotiate as "equal partners" from a position of strength, not in "desperation and in fear of giving away the shop".

Ms Cox added that a new Government office to open in Washington DC in coming months would be crucial to getting Bermuda's story told effectively in the United States. She noted that the Island fell victim to "electioneering rhetoric" when it was named in attack ads during the 2008 US elections. While that pressure has fallen off since the US President Barack Obama took office, "the threat will not completely disappear," she said.

However, being on the OECD white list helps the Island to make its case to the Americans, she added. The Minister said she believed that office would come to be more important even than Government's London office, which is the Island's "window to Europe".

• Last night Ms Cox confirmed that negotiations on a TIEA with Japan, which were taking place on the Island last week, had been completed.

She pointed out that the treaty negotiations with Japan included "meaningful benefits for Bermuda such as the mini Double Taxation Agreement benefits for students, pensions and a clause for Prohibition of Prejudicial or Restrictive Measurers which provides an undertaking that Japan would not adopt measurers which discriminate against Bermuda compared to other major economies for example members of the OECD".

She added: "We are delighted to have reached another milestone in our continuing efforts to sign Tax Information Exchange Agreements with other jurisdictions. Japan's discussions with Bermuda represented Japan's first TIEA negotiations."