The Isle of Man parliament, Tynwald, has ratified the taxation agreements on exchange of information with the Nordic countries of Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The agreements were signed by the Isle of Man’s Treasury Minister, Alan Bell, in Oslo in October last year. “I expect that the Isle of Man will be signing more international tax agreements in the near future and that, as with the Nordic agreements, we will move rapidly to bring them into force,” Mr Bell said in a statement. The Isle of Man's government says it has pursued a policy of engaging with member states of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) of industrial nations and follows similar agreements concluded with the US and the Netherlands in 2002 and 2005 respectively. The OECD, which describes the Isle of Man as a co-operative financial jurisdiction for the purposes of providing other regimes with financial information, says there are about 40 tax havens around the world. Some jurisdictions, such as Monaco, are classed by the OECD as un-cooperative. The Tax Justice Network, an anti-tax haven lobby group, estimates that global tax authorities miss out on at least $250 billion a year due to financial centres such as the Isle of Man, Monaco or The Cayman Islands. However, some organisations, such as the US think tank, The Cato Institute, argue that tax havens are to be welcomed as they deter governments from pushing up taxes signficantly as havens offer citizens an escape route.