Finance Minister Eugene Cox got a grilling from youth yesterday, as 26 high school and college students attended his Budget presentation before the Chamber of Commerce.

Their keenness to participate could be seen when Bermuda High School year 12 student Karen Jones jumped up to ask the first question about exactly what targets Mr. Cox had set as he attempted to increase the number of tourists to Bermuda.

Mr. Cox has committed $4 million in additional spending to the Tourism Department, of which about $2.14 million will be for marketing and promotion of the Island. Tourist air arrivals, a key indicator, were down 2.9 percent to about 309,000, while overall number of visitors fell by 0.4 percent to about 379,000.

Mr. Cox said the goal was to get air arrivals up to the 400,000 range for a total of 500,000 to 600,000 visitors a year.

In all four students and two business people questioned Mr. Cox on the Budget during the breakfast presentation at the Canadian Pacific Hamilton Princess.

The students were sponsored by the Canadian Pacific group, on the instigation of Robin Trimingham of the Chamber of Commerce.

The organisation will follow up the programme by continuing to invite students to the monthly business breakfast presentations held by the Chamber of Commerce.

Ms Jones, who is interested in information technology and has worked at Ernst & Young during the summer, gave Mr. Cox high marks for clarity of presentation. She was especially pleased about his use of graphs in the Power Point slide presentation on the screen.

But since she hasn't seen other presentations by Mr. Cox's predecessors she says she can't really make an informed presentation.

"I think he did really well,'' she said. She didn't understand the proposed concept of a bonded warehouse for businesses importing goods and was afraid to ask. Someone nearby told her she should have asked as others in the room probably didn't as well.

"I was pleased to see more interest in education,'' she said.

Kristin White, a student government representative at The Bermuda College, was also pleased to see the emphasis on education. Ms White, 18, studies business administration with a major in insurance. She didn't qualify to vote in the past election, but she will be ready for the next.

"They have a lot of plans for the future that appear to be about helping Bermudians,'' she said. "They have good plans for education giving us a lot of hopes for our future.'' However she was a bit confused about the intent of duty free shopping. Once apprised of the meaning, she said she would be opposed to any intent to stop residents shopping overseas if there wasn't a related attempt to bring prices down in Bermuda.

"They have to have a balance,'' she said. "We should be allowed to shop overseas as we can't get the savings here. Bermuda is very expensive as he stated.'' The Chamber of Commerce and Canadian Pacific invited four students each from the schools. The Bermuda High School, Saltus, Warwick Academy, Cedarbridge Academy, Bermuda College, Berkeley Institute and the Bermuda Institute sent representatives.

"I thought they showed a lot of confidence when asking questions,'' Hamilton Princess general manager Michael Kaile said.

More on Budget: Page 26 Eugene Cox BUSINESS BUC