Boomtime – first economic growth recorded since 2007

Wednesday 30 September 2015

A huge upturn in finance industry profits has led to the first improvement in the economy since 2007, according to fresh figures out this morning.

The value of Jersey’s economy rose 5% to £3.9 billion last year – that figure may be a long way off the 2001 peak, but it shows the first annual improvement since the crash of 2008.

The Island’s economic recovery is due to big profits in the finance sector – although there was slight improvement in the rest of the economy apart from farming, retail and utilities, all of which shrank.

This morning’s figures – put together by the independent Statistics Unit – show that there’s still a huge gap between how the various sectors of the Island economy are performing.

They show that Gross Value Added (GVA) performance across key sectors of the economy was:

 Finance – up 9%.

Public administration – up 4%.

Business services – up 2%.

Wholesale and retail – down 3%.

Agriculture – down 17%.

 But the stats also show that the standard economic measure of GVA per capita – the value of the economy divided by the population – has dropped by 19% since 2007.

During the same period, the measure has actually risen by 10% in Guernsey and dropped by less than 1% in the UK.