LAST week we reported on the forthcoming Institute of Directors annual conference, which this year has the theme: would you invest in Guernsey plc?

Investment in this island, of course, is vital for its future and prosperity. Without it, there would be no full employment, no finance sector and tax revenues would plummet.

It is one reason why the island’s strategic plan aims to keep Guernsey a business-friendly destination. Without commerce, as history has amply demonstrated, the island declines.

The IoD will come to its own conclusions about whether Guernsey is a good place to do business – but the signs are not good.

For a start, anyone considering whether to invest here needs to know what the income tax structure is, certainly on business profits, and that remains unknown.

And not only can government here not say what it intends to take off businesses, it can’t control its own expenditure.

For a hard-headed executive that’s very worrying. While there is an understanding on what might replace zero-10, a public sector growing at 10% per annum at a time of supposed restraint demonstrates a government with an unsustainable desire to spend other people’s money – and an eye for further tax increases.

The same edition of the Guernsey Press with the IoD article also recorded two other items, the amount of the minimum wage and further restrictions on anyone working in child care.

What no one has heard is complaints from islanders about their minimum wage. The reason is that they will not work – do not need to work – in those low paid sectors.

There is, currently, plenty of alternative employment to keep them economically active and making a contribution to this island.

So Guernsey’s ‘business friendly’ leaders have decided to ramp up the costs of more marginal operations for purely political reasons. In doing so, they run the risk of closing such businesses, reducing economic diversity, removing wage competition and depriving those who are prepared to work for less than £6 an hour of a job.

Would you invest in Guernsey plc?