Bermuda has been overstating the number of companies registered on the Island for more than a decade, Government revealed yesterday.

Economic Development Minister Grant Gibbons said the errors had been spotted by officials at the Registrar of Companies.

Restated numbers going back to 2004 were published yesterday evening. The total tally for the end of 2014 is 16,187 companies — meaning that more than 2,000 companies have effectively been trimmed from the register.

At the end of the second quarter of 2014, Government reported a total of 18,668 companies on the register.

Dr Gibbons stated that errors were discovered in the way company registration statistics were being extracted and compiled from the raw data stored in the Registrar of Companies’ database.

“Over the past few months, officials within the Ministry have worked together with subject matter experts to trace the source of the errors and to resolve them,” Dr Gibbons said.

“Extracting the necessary data from the Registrar of Companies’ system is a complex process. Mistakes in the technical queries used to obtain the required data was the primary cause of inaccurate information being reported.

“A substantial number of man hours have been dedicated to correcting this issue which has existed for more than ten years. Following a thorough review, we have made changes to the queries and processes used to extract the data and have produced corrected figures.”

Dr Gibbons added that including the Finance Ministry, the Department of Statistics and the Bermuda Monetary Authority all relied on this data in generating their own reports.

“We have worked very hard to ensure that the information we release going forward is accurate,” he said.

In the fourth quarter, the number of new registrations totalled 307, down from the 322 that registered in the same period of 2013

The 1,178 total new registrations for 2014 showed a three per cent increase over the 1,143 new registrations in 2013 and a 21.5 per cent increase over the 969 new registrations in 2012. Dr Gibbons stated, “The corrected data shows positive signs for our economy with continuous growth in the number of registrations since 2012.”

Registrations for local businesses increased by 37 per cent from 2012 to 2014 while registrations of international businesses have increased by approximately 19.5 per cent in the same period.