Confidence boost hits the rocks

Just over a week ago the president of Policy & Resources delivered his most positive Budget report since taking up the role of ‘Chancellor’ five years ago.

A ‘fair, innovative and confident’ Budget for 2018 promised only pleasant surprises thanks to government income being higher than expected.

There was a tangible sense that, after some tough years and belt tightening, the island had turned a corner.

As part of that Deputy Gavin St Pier was able to give thousands of islanders a tax break and to start putting money back into the capital infrastructure account after years of shortfall, borne out of short-term necessity.

He concluded: ‘It is vital that we do not merely maintain and replace existing assets, but that we invest to enable transformation of how we deliver our services – and, increasingly importantly, to facilitate and drive growth in our economy.’

Which is where the second statement, this time by Economic Development, comes in. This paints a less rosy picture.

Here the island’s economy has been merely ‘treading water’ in recent years and ‘a series of local stakeholders have raised concerns about the island’s current and future economic performance’.

GDP has gone up by just 0.47% over three years, the committee says, wages have fallen, construction is at an all-time low and ‘all anecdotal evidence is that business confidence remains low’.

The investment in infrastructure is below international norms and the economy is not where it was, nor where it should be.

Stimulus, ED says, is urgently required.

While no one disputes that, post-global crash, the economy has faltered there is a clear gap between the confidence levels of the two committees.

How important that is and how it manifests itself is hard to judge.

But it raises a question for islanders about how confident they should be. Have we been steered into the rocks and need to man the bilge pumps or have we negotiated the worst of it and can now look forward to sailing into calmer seas?