Chamber Examines Cost-of-Living Bill 2026
The Chamber “supports the goal of easing the cost of living” however “it does not support this Bill” the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce said as they released their perspective on the Cost-of-Living Commission Amendment [No. 2] Bill 2026.
The document states, “The cost of living in Bermuda is not an abstract policy question. It is the daily arithmetic that shapes a household’s week -what fits in the basket, what gets put back on the shelf, what shift gets picked up to make it work, and increasingly, whether it is worth staying at all.
“The Government’s own survey work confirms the sentiment: the number one reason Bermudians who have left the Island cite for leaving is the cost of living, ahead of every other factor. It is the same reality the Chamber’s own members, and their staff are living, in the same aisles and at the same registers.
“Nothing in this response minimises any of that. The affordability crisis in Bermuda is real, it is urgent, and it deserves the serious response the Government says it does. The Chamber’s disagreement with the Cost-of-Living Commission Amendment (No. 2) Bill 2026 is not about whether to act – it is about whether this instrument, in this form, will make the situation better or worse for the very households it is meant to help.
“Chamber-member businesses employ the same Bermudians whose grocery bills are the subject of this debate; their staff, their families, their neighbours are living the same pressure. The Chamber writes this response as an organisation whose members are also Bermudians – in the belief that a good-faith exchange about what actually works is more useful to the family standing in the grocery aisle than any legislation that misfires the diagnosis.”
According to the document the ‘Key Facts At A Glance’ are:
1. Price transparency. Already in law since June 2022, with weekly publication required since November 2022. The Bill does not add it. What the Bill adds is cost disclosure – a different regulatory instrument.
2. The number. The $4.6 million in grocery duty relief -spread across Bermuda’s roughly 30,000 households [28,192 at the 2016 Census], on the order of $3 per household per week -matters, but the $40 million public headline does not survive scrutiny. Its composition has not been transparently broken down but appears to consist substantially of fuel and electricity relief – a category the Chamber has publicly supported in successive Chamber submissions. The Bill’s compliance apparatus is being built around the $4.6 million grocery slice; no impact assessment on proportionality was produced.
3. Regional comparators. Jamaica compels nothing from retailers. The Bahamas is a cautionary tale the Inter-American Development Bank warned about in 2022. The United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia operate business-to-business supplier codes administered by independent competition regulators. None supports what No. 2 introduces.
4. The Commission’s own delivery. Statutory duties on the Commission since 2022 – not met. Two grocers have publicly supplied data; the wider grocery-pricing data is already public at pronto.bm, dropit.bm, shop.miles.bm and marketplace.bm.
5. Prior positions. For six years -through 2020, 2025, and March 2026 – the framework was described in terms that would exclude what No. 2 introduces. The position changed only after 8 May 2026, when the essential-commodities list was doubled by regulation with no Parliamentary vote.
6. Consultation. The underlying regulations were made and in force before the one industry meeting. The Bill’s substantive text was seen only days before House passage. No impact assessment was produced.
7. Grocery inflation. Bermuda food +41.9%, United States food +39.9% over the same decade [December 2015 - March 2026]. Bermuda’s food inflation tracks the country from which it imports most of its groceries.
The full 14 page document Chamber document on the Cost of Living Amendment can be read here [PDF].
“The affordability crisis in Bermuda is real, it is urgent, and it deserves the serious response the Government says it does.”
And yet we should be so much better off than the Americans, the Canadians, and the Brits.
Our reported rate of retail price inflation has been consistently lower than that of the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. for the past 5 years!
According to Burtonomics.
According to the Department of Statistics.
Are you suggesting that the Bermuda Government Department of Statistics is manipulating data to support the PLP political agenda?
Oh no, everyone knows that the PLP Government is an konourable Government and would never do anything to influence the integrity of a Government Department.