decade as closed markets have opened, technology has made truly international trading possible and national borders have come to mean less and less.

Somehow, through all those momentous changes, little protectionist Bermuda has swum along fairly happily, buffeted from the best and worst of the global economy by its policies dividing international and local companies.

And if that protection meant Bermuda was spared from the worst of conglomerates coming and bleeding and stripping local businesses, it may also have resulted in inefficiencies and being starved for investment.

Now Government has announced that it will begin to end the division between local and international business. The start will come in 2003 when international financial services companies will be able to compete with local businesses. Regardless of the merits of the decision, it is disappointing that it has been presented as a fait accompli; a major policy change of this kind deserves to be fully aired, possibly with a Green or White Paper before a decision is made. To be sure, the Government has the power, and the votes, to make the decision on its own, but the whole community deserves a say.

Clearly the decision has been made under pressure from the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, which is committed to opening markets everywhere in the world and objects to the slightest hint of international and local companies being treated differently.

There have, of course, been examples of international companies being allowed to operate in the local market where it has been shown to be in the public interest. The rule has usually been waived for international hotel chains which wished to operate in Bermuda.

More recently, TeleBermuda International Ltd. was allowed to operate as an international company after it failed to raise sufficient capital to give it 60 percent local ownership. That decision also came under criticism because then-Finance Minister Grant Gibbons was the beneficiary of a trust which had a substantial investment in the company.

Friday's announcement seems to make the exception the rule, and although Mr.

Cox has promised that the decision does not mean Bermuda's "local merchants...suddenly going to find themselves competing with multi-national department stores, or that another door has been opened to franchise-type restaurants'', it is difficult to see how one international company will be allowed in and another refused.

Equally, any relaxation of the rule restricting international businesses doing business locally will inevitably mean a relaxation of the 60 percent Bermudian ownership rule for local companies, who will argue that they need foreign investment to compete. What this will mean in terms of local control of business is impossible to discern now.

Government has made a commitment with far-reaching ramifications. But the mechanics of how the Island will get from "here'' (an economy with a protected local market and an international business sector which competes with the world) to "there'' (an entirely open market where the local business sector will have to sink or swim) is far from clear.