Premier Dr the Honourable Natalio Wheatley predicts that the territory’s financial performance for 2022 will surpass pre-pandemic figures, based on reports from the Financial Services Commission.’
In a recent presentation to the House of Assembly, Premier Wheatley said that throughout the first quarter of 2022, figures compared to previous years, had surpassed those of 2019 – before COVID 19 gripped economies across the globe.
He said, “The year 2022 opened with a very confident financial performance. For every month of quarter 1, 2022 new incorporation figures were similarly as healthy as last year and importantly surpassed those of 2019, before the COVID 19 pandemic began to affect the territory.”
“New Incorporations up to March 2022 stood at 8075, which was a 4.4 percent increase over the same period in 2021. Additionally for each month of quarter one, the total amount of revenue exceeded the same month last year,” he added.
The premier also said that for that period, the Financial Services Commission saw a growth of 9.9 percent in collected fees compared to the same period last year.
For the second quarter of the year however, the Premier reported slightly fewer encouraging features when compared to recent years.
While the factors affecting this trend are still being analysed, Dr. Wheatley said that preliminary findings suggest a number of possible factors.
“This might be due to… long term UK and European sanctions on Russian businesses and individuals… uncertainty of the impact of political and economic tensions between China and the U.S on international trade… Business uncertainty due to global inflationary pressure and a corresponding increase in rates … the unsettled financial markets following higher monetary policies by central banks and e-market saturation”, he explained.
“Overall, the recovery from the pandemic years has been impressive. In 2021 the Territory’s International Business Financial Services and Regulatory Sectors Generated over 222 million dollars in revenue for the territory based on the year-end fee collection statement from the FSC. Further, those sectors continue to play a very important role in the global economy by streamlining cross-border trade and investment”, Premier Wheatley added.