Economic Development Committee
 On
going Development and New Committee in progress. For more information,
or interest in joining contact Diane Gordon info@bcc.bm.
A
letter from the Chairman, J. A. Astwood:
The last three years has seen continuing overall economic growth in
Bermuda.
However, the visitor industry, as a result of twenty-four years of falling
passenger arrivals at the airport, has caused the net closure of 34 hotels,
1742 beds and the net loss of 2502 jobs. In spite of this dramatic number
of hotel closures, Bermuda’s versatile entrepreneurial spirit within
our workforce remains buoyant and as a result there is no visible sign
of unemployment emerging in this sector.
Pockets of profitability exist in the visitor business sector largely
because business closures have caused the money spent to be spread through
less and less operating companies.
The Government has placed an additional tax burden on Bermuda with an
increased of 22.7% from $511,358,000 (1998/1999) to $627,343,000 (2001/2002),
in spite of the serious weakness in the visitor sector of our economy.
The Government has placed on employers, in the form of law and regulation,
the request for employment statistical information, which includes the
racial make up of the staff of a company, no doubt as a result of having
to ascertain that race is not an employment consideration in Bermuda.
With 40 years of this Chamber of Commerce advocating equal opportunity
employment practices, which philosophy is also enshrined in the Bermuda
Employment Council and all other Trades Unions, the statistics will make
interesting findings.
Corporate Bermuda may, in the next five to ten years, have to seriously
address providing housing for imported staff as that number increases
from 8,000 to over 15,000 required:
- To fill vacant jobs, as Bermuda’s birth rate continues to
fall as a result of our economic prosperity;
- To fill the jobs being created through normal business growth,
and
- For new business creation.We have asked the Board to re-establish
the Commercial Education Liaison Committee of The Bermuda Chamber
of Commerce starting with the first set of existing terms of reference
(1969) and modify them to suit 2001.
Here again we salute the over 1700 Small Business Enterprises in Bermuda,
some of whom will be our big businesses in the future. You are the creators
of new and additional skills and wealth for Bermudians.
We have to continue developing our global competitive skills by keeping
ourselves on the cutting edge, by the provision of creative, skillful
and efficient services, in order to keep our position in the fiercely
competitive business of service providers to the world. We can take nothing
for granted in our relationship with other countries.
J.A. Astwood, Chairman
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