Over the weekend Guernsey Finance achieved one of its long-held goals – high profile national media coverage. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for its stated aim of ‘promoting and connecting Guernsey as a leading international finance centre in key markets’.
But the events of the past couple of weeks at the promotional agency have certainly heightened interest in it and led to increased levels of scrutiny, that, on a professional level, could be said to be well overdue.
The States’ post-Covid response to build back better involved throwing an extra £1m. a year at the agency. And then doing little more than pointing to that investment and remarking how well things are going.
On top of that largesse, in recent times it has decided to do away with political oversight on its board, and requires no formal publication of an annual report to inform taxpayers where £2.5m. is going every year, instead hosting an annual update event where self-congratulation is high on the agenda.
Everyone involved in attracting new business to the island would have a view on how to do Guernsey Finance’s job, and would probably do it differently. And that means you can find industry (privately) not so positive about it.
It’s time government took a more active role in testing the approach at Guernsey Finance, and a shame it took these headlines to trigger it.
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