Growing economic divide as finance improves and other sectors decline

Thursday 24 April 2014

The finance sector is showing strong signs of recovery but the rest of the economy is still struggling, according to the latest business survey which shows the sharp divide in the Island’s economic outlook.

The figures show that 43% of finance firms are doing more business than they were three months ago, with just 15% saying that things have gotten worse. But in the non-finance areas – retail, construction, tourism and everything else – the trend is reversed, with 29% saying that things have gotten worse and just 18% saying they have improved.

In the wholesale and retail sector, business optimism declined compared to the last six months, although the construction industry reported optimism about future employment prospects for the first time in four years.

Overall, the economy had stood perfectly still over the last three months – a quarter of the businesses surveyed by the States Statistics Unit said that they had picked up more work and exactly the same percentage said that there was less activity to report.

Since the first time that the business tendency survey was carried out in March 2010, the non-finance sectors have reported that business has dropped every three months – by contrast, the finance sector has reported an increase in business in 13 out of the 16 quarters covered.