Chamber: Gov is ‘in Denial’

The Chamber of Commerce says this year’s Budget shows the gov is ‘in denial’ about the harsh realities being experienced by the majority of businesses and their employees.

Reacting to the Budget, Chamber said it is ‘yet another missed opportunity’ to address many long-running issues that it has highlighted as being ‘barriers to economic growth’.

In a statement, a spokesperson said that the Budget will ‘not drive economic growth or address the main challenges that businesses in many sectors are facing (i.e. rising costs, labour and skills shortages)’.

They added: ‘The tax changes announced will increase these disparities. This makes the Isle of Man a less attractive option for workers from overseas – a crucial point in the context of employers needing to recruit in order to address labour and skills shortages, and in terms of meeting the government’s own target of increasing the economically active population.

‘We also need to consider that many experienced and highly qualified professionals in critical roles with Island businesses right now have plenty of options to relocate to competitor jurisdictions. This Budget is unlikely to help employers address any of these challenges.’

Continued Failure

The Budget, Chamber says, is increasing the tax burden for workers, ‘especially single people and those on lower and middle incomes, at the same time as increasing the budgets for all Government departments’.

Its spokesperson added: ‘This shows government’s continued failure to focus on making departments more efficient and providing better value for money, rather than increasing spending.’

Positives

The Chamber isn’t only critical of the Budget, it did like that Dr Alex Allinson had rubber stamped the work of the recently established Skills Board and said it is ‘keen to hear more about the support he will enable to progress the key actions’.

It also acknowledged help for workers with child support and childcare, as well as looking at the procurement process to support local businesses.

However, it added: ‘In short, the Budget is an example of government being more focused on input than output in terms of the service delivery of departments. Chamber – as it has done since it published a Business Manifesto in the run up to the 2021 IOM General Election – has been calling for government to do more to improve efficiency across all departments i.e. removing duplication across departments, focussing on delivery not producing more  strategies and replacing paper with digitised services.’