'We must look to the future'

FRIDAY, JULY 22: Government is using “all the tools” in its locker to fight the effects of the “great recession”, Premier Paula Cox said yesterday.

She said her administration had adopted a strategy focused on creating opportunities for the unemployed, upgrading people’s skills and promoting entrepreneurship.

And she targeted the “green energy” and “blue ocean” economies as twin areas of opportunity for businessmen.

With unemployment at its highest since the early ‘90s and the economy now trumping crime as the number one concern among voters, the island’s financial woes are dominating the national debate.

A slew of new recession-busting initiatives have been announced in the past two weeks including a price commission to investigate food costs, plans for wealthy job creators to be granted permanent residency and a Procurement Office to help control costs on capital projects.

Political posturing?

A move to inject $1million from an aborted 2002 ‘employment insurance’ scheme into job-creating projects also goes to the House today.

The measures, combined with a public meeting on the economy this week, have been dismissed by critics as political posturing ahead of a likely election, where the OBA intends to hold the Government to account over its record on the economy.

Ms Cox would not make any forecasts of a timescale for recovery, which her administration believes is tied to the pace of the recovery of the global economy, particularly the US.

But she said Bermuda’s focus in the interim should be to create new employment and training opportunities for its people and position itself for a full recovery.

 “We have introduced a number of initiatives that will assist Bermudians in the short term and will benefit our people in the long run as we prepare for recovery.  “Though times are tough, we cannot leave the most vulnerable in our community to fend for themselves; and under my watch as Premier, this will not happen.

“As a country, we must look to the future, and grasp the opportunities of the Green Energy Economy and the Blue Ocean Economy to provide new economic opportunities for our citizens. We must look to new markets, both near and far, and offer new services to the world with ever increasing efficiency.”

Green jobs has been highlighted as a growth sector both in the US and Bermuda.

Expanding the  ‘blue ocean economy’ would involve investigating and creating business opportunites in the 200m economic exclusion zone that forms Bermuda’s territorial waters.

Increased offshore commercial fishing, ocean floor mining and aquaculture (farming of fish) have been mooted as potential businesses in that sector in the past.

In the long term Premier Cox has targeted “deficit reduction, enterprise, and fairness” as the key areas to help rebalance the economy and ‘create sustainable growth’.

Special report: Bermuda in recession

• Slump sparks health fears
• Threatened with jail for childbirth bill
• 'We must look to the future'
• Viewpoint: How is the recession affecting you?
• A financial mess of our own making?
• The good news - help is at hand
• 'Green' jobs are seen as source of future growth
• Turning passion into profit
• We must grasp new realities to recover from this slump