Finance sector not bouncing back quickly

Tuesday 15 December 2020

The Guernsey Economic and Financial Stability Overview has been released, highlighting Guernsey’s continued resilience in the face of COVID-19.

‘Bounce-back’ is already being felt in a number of sectors, including Real-Estate and Construction, where conditions in the last quarter appear to be better than the same time last year.

“We’re starting to see a clearer picture of the overall economic impact COVID-19 has had,” said the Treasury lead for Policy & Resources, Deputy Mark Helyar.

“It is encouraging to see unemployment is  back down, and that some sectors have quickly bounced back to the point where their activity levels are in fact up on 2019.”

Pictured: Forecasts for 2020 suggest a contraction of GVA of 5-8%.

A wide range of indicators have been taken into consideration when developing the report. Guernsey is expecting its Gross Value Added to contract by an estimated 6.6%, which is comparatively smaller than what the UK is expecting.

Due to effects being felt elsewhere in the world, the Finance sector seems to be suffering the most. A fall in total employment has been recorded from late 2019 and continuing into 2020.

“We need to be very aware that our Finance industry, which was arguably less impacted by the lockdown in the spring, is also taking longer to recover,” said Deputy Helyar.

Pictured: Inflation remains relatively stable in Guernsey as measured by annual changes in RPIX.

Nearly £43 million has been paid in formal business support schemes and Deputy Helyar has commended our island community for how well it has coped during these trying times.

“We have a big challenge ahead of us, but what we’ve achieved as a community this year in our response to the pandemic has put us in as good a place as we could realistically hope to be.”

You can read the full overview here.

Pictured top: “We need to be realistic about what the world is going through and how much worse a situation we might have expected when the pandemic first arrived on our shores," said Deputy Helyar.