Chamber: recession is not over yet
Thursday 9th July 2009, 2:30PM BST.
TALK of being out of the worst of the recession is still premature, according to Guernsey Chamber of Commerce president Paul Luxon.
The British Chamber of Commerce earlier this week released a report, based on a survey of 5,600 companies in the UK, and found there had been ‘welcome progress’ in confidence levels between April and June.
And although encouraged by signs of confidence, Mr Luxon (pictured) said it was still too early to be overly-confident as other surveys were still producing and forecasting conflicting results and findings.
‘The Guernsey Chamber of Commerce is affiliated to the British Chambers of Commerce and we are aware of the survey undertaken in the UK recently. Although it’s good to hear signs of some confidence returning it is clearly too early to be able to truly understand when the UK could realistically start to think about coming out of recession.
‘There are lots of mixed and confused signals coming out of the various pieces of data available, but in saying that, any signs of any improving confidence must be a good thing for the UK economy.’
In terms of the local economy, Mr Luxon felt Guernsey had held up well compared to other places.
‘From a Guernsey perspective, the island has been very resilient to the crash of the financial markets. And although there has been some impact, the impact has been relatively minimal.
‘I think local businesses are watching the signs closely to help them work out decisions they make in terms of investments.’
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The recession certainly is not over until all wasteful spending and destruction of wealth is levelled and we return to real hard values. So we’ve seen the contraction of spending, paying off of debt and return to prudence in the business sector and the consumer sectors. That just leaves one area to go. The public sector.
But of course the public sector is doing the opposite. It is still protecting its empire, its obese grith, its consumptive high spending ways. Be it the British Govt spending like a banshee or the States of Guernsey with its Christmas Wish List all funded by on credit card debt the private sector has to pick up the bill.
Until the public sector gets brought down to ground, with major spending and staff cuts, the recessionary shake-out will not be complete. Wether that means public sector default and bankruptcy, or they learn to take the hard decisions themselves to avert such embarrasment matters not to the economic cycle.
One way or the other the spoilt brats of the British and Guernsey Govts will face their day in court.
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The JPM article above is absolutely correct. The proportion of non producing public service workers to private sector workers in the UK must be the highest in the Western world. As people lose their jobs in the private sector the ratio of the public sector increases whilst the revenues diminish. Recently I read that the average income of public service personel was 4% higher than that of the private sector – that is frightening if correct. A leader with courage could fix this but unfortunately such a person is not to be seen!
A Question for the Channel Islands.(This you won’t want to publish).
Is there still a problem with Ocean outfall? I read a year or so ago that £56m had been allocated to fix this. We in Australasia have developed an almost self sufficient system that could be used thoughout the islands & would not cost anywhere near the £56m. However we need to know if there is a natural gas supply to the islands & is it available to all islands? If someone could provide an answer to this question it would be much appreciated,
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