Doug DeCouto On Economy, Stagnation & More
Shadow Finance Minister Dr. Doug DeCouto highlighted concerns from the Chamber of Commerce’s March 2025 Economic Report, saying “the local economy in many ways is stuck and stagnant, a reflection of the failure of most of Government’s Economic Development Initiatives to make an impact.
Shadow Finance Minister Dr Doug DeCouto said, “The Chamber of Commerce just released its March 2025 Economic Report. While the information and statistics in this report should be carefully studied, the messages in the data paint a clear but disturbing picture. And unfortunately, that picture is unsurprising as we’ve been watching it evolve for several years under the PLP Government’s continued failure to grow the economy and properly run our country.
“To highlight a few key issues among many, the chamber report highlights that while the overall economy seems to grow, as measured by GDP, it’s driven by IB. The local economy in many ways is stuck and stagnant, a reflection of the failure of most of Government’s Economic Development Initiatives to make an impact.
“In addition the report estimates a massive reduction in Bermuda’s population of 7,000 to 9,000 people, with a rapidly aging workforce. This shrinking population underlies serious structural issues in our tax base, pensions, and healthcare costs. However, despite acknowledging this issue in great deal in its own reports, the Government has yet to not produce any solutions or way forward.
“Finally, the report identifies significant issues around releasing key data from Government, that has been getting worse over time. Government need to properly resource these departments so they can produce the information required for informed decision making, and Ministers need to stop sitting on reports and hiding information from the public. On key example is the 2023 Pensions Actuarial review, that will tell us the health of the Social Insurance and Public Service Pensions – why hasn’t Government shared these?
“These and other topics will be some of the major concerns we will debate in the upcoming Throne Speech and Budget debates – we hope we can get some answers.”
