Traditional industries, including fishing and farming, must be supported because they are the lifeblood of the community, the Treasury and Resources Minister has said.
Speaking to Rural ahead of the Budget debate on Tuesday 8 December, Senator Alan Maclean said that it was not just about money, stressing that the Council of Ministers was focused on reducing the red tape and over regulation that stifled economic growth and competitiveness.
‘Small businesses are absolutely crucially important, and those, by the way, are the ones that have been most impacted by a lot of the bureaucracy. It’s so difficult to do anything, which is what we have to open up.’
He added: ‘We need to support all traditional industries, and it’s not just fishing and farming. It’s tourism and the other sectors. The small business sectors in Jersey are crucially important. They are the lifeblood of the community.’
Asked whether there was a mechanism to provide emergency funding to the agricultural sector and fisheries, the Senator said that the Minister for Sustainable and Economic Development, Deputy Gerald Voisin, was looking very closely at his budget.
‘He’s already cut a certain amount of waste out of it and reprioritised money to go to the areas that most needed,’ Senator Maclean said.
‘The important traditional industries do need to be looked after. We also need to recognise, if we use tourism as an example, that it’s not just about tourism. Tourism is crucially important to the finance industry because people come, whether because of finance or any other sector of the economy, they need flights, they need connectivity, they need hotels, restaurants.
‘All of it is interlinked, and people forget that. So, you’re never just looking at just one. And agriculture is the same. We need to be more self-sustaining in terms of growing our own produce and our farmers are custodians of the countryside.’
‘I don’t particularly like the formulas that have been introduced in a slap-dash way in recent times, such as those linked net revenue expenditure that fund arts, heritage and culture. These types of formula are kind of blunt.
‘In a sense, it’s because those areas perhaps weren’t looked after properly in the past, and they should have been. But it’s about appropriately budgeting to make sure the important sectors, and they are all important, get the funding they need to sustain them.’
The Treasury Minister said that having Senator Mark Boleat around the Council of Ministers table was also ‘a real plus’. The Senator has been given responsibility for reviewing all regulation with a view to take a more pragmatic and balanced view so that the Island does not lose its competitive edge.
‘He’s looking at it in a forensic way, and he will make practical changes, which will make life easier for Islanders and make life easier for businesses, and therefore less costly,’ headed. ‘If we take cost out, then the end consumer benefits. And guess what? You won’t see such an increase in price because it won’t have to get passed on.’
