This Is Guernsey

THE Treasury and Resources minister made a telling point when calling for an urgent overhaul of the way Guernsey’s financial data is presented in the annual accounts – the way it is done now is just unreadable.

‘Ordinary people can look at the Jersey accounts and they’re easy to understand. That’s just not the case with ours. Even some qualified accountants struggle,’ he said.

There are actually two points to this. The first is that Guernsey’s are not meant to be read by ordinary people. The second is that the States has steadily been reducing the amount of data it releases.

The trend has accelerated since 2004 and the merger of the 50-plus committees but goes back to reports issued by the Advisory and Finance Committee based on material generated by the then head of the Economics and Statistics Unit.

Detailed work was done on the value of the various economic sectors of the island in terms of the multiplier effect and actual cash contributions made.

It did not make happy reading and, in the case of Tourism, indicated that the value was equivalent to the support it received from the taxpayer.

After a behind-the-scenes revolt by those who felt threatened by such disclosures, the figures never appeared again.

They exist, of course, but not in public.

The Treasury minister is correct in his critical comparison with Jersey. There, it is possible to see what industrial sectors are flourishing and which are not and that invites debate along the lines of ‘should we devote public money, civil servants, infrastructure and housing licences to X since it is, frankly, a dead duck?’