The Pacific island of Vanuatu will be removed from the OECD's blacklist of non-cooperative tax-havens after it committed itself to improve the 'transparency of its tax and regulatory systems and to establishing effective exchange of information for tax matters with OECD countries by 31 December 2005'.

According to the OECD, Vanuatu is the first tax haven to be removed from the list, which was first published in April 2002.

Now the OECD is hoping the remaining six blacklisted tax havens, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Liberia, Monaco, The Marshall Islands and Nauru, will make similar commitments.