Guernsey's "Economic Vision" to be scrapped

Thursday 18 January 2018

The Economic Vision for Guernsey, which was put together by a former Economic Development Committee, has been withdrawn from the States' agenda.

The Economic Development Committee, which has three new members, including a new President and Vice President, has agreed the current vision shouldn't be debated so they can come up with a new plan.

The existing Economic Vision was drawn up by a committee led by the former Economic Development President, Deputy Peter Ferbrache, and the former ED Vice President, Deputy Jan Kuttlewascher. Both have since stood down from those roles, along with committee member Deputy Jennifer Merrett.

That left just Deputies Andrea Dudley Owen and Joe Mooney on the committee which had written the Economic Vision. When Deputy Charles Parkinson was elected ED President he made it clear that he would not back the vision saying there was nothing new in it and he would prefer to start again from scratch.

Yesterday, Deputy Dudley Owen was elected Vice President of Economic Development, with Deputies David de Lisle and Dawn Tindall elected as committee members. They joined the other members of the ED Committee at a meeting where the decision was made to withdraw the Economic Vision policy letter from the business scheduled for this week's States meeting.

That has to be authorised by the Bailiff, who received the paperwork yesterday:

If the Bailiff agrees the ED Committee can withdraw the policy letter, its say it will "enable its new members to input into the document, and build a plan for long-term sustainable economic growth in partnership with the private sector and other parts of government".

In addition the Committee said it will "prioritise the short-term decisions and actions needed to further improve Guernsey’s competitiveness for local and international businesses. The Committee’s intention is to resubmit the document in revised form as soon as possible".

The existing Economic Vision can be read here.