In 2019, I penned an opinion piece on the primary reason why Cayman Islands was becoming an economic powerhouse of the Caribbean and would overtake Bermuda.

This was picked up by the Cayman Compass and its editorial was republished by The Royal Gazette.

In 2020, the Gazette published a series of articles about the growth of the Cayman Islands’ economy and the reasons for its success. My more recent contributions have also been sprinkled with concerns about our failure to remain competitive in the global offshore economic community and how Cayman was closing the gap. I have rung the alarm bell in any number of meetings with both business and political leaders. More often than not, people seem surprised or nonchalant about Cayman’s success. However, in this newspaper last week, there was an article titled “Cayman economy on course to catch Bermuda”, which demonstrated my very points:

When you compare us directly with Cayman, we are similar in so many ways that it is difficult to fathom how one jurisdiction is growing and one is shrinking. Both jurisdictions have respected financial regulators, financial centres, stock exchanges, Westminster systems of government, low unemployment, a tourism product heavily reliant on US visitors and excellent airports. Both require 90 per cent or more of food and consumer goods to be imported, have high living costs, are reliant on large numbers of foreign workers to fill jobs, but are also generally stable, safe and highly sophisticated socially, politically and legally — certainly compared with other small-island jurisdictions.

Bermuda is far more beautiful. We still have better overall infrastructure — excluding roads — natural beauty and public transport systems compared with Cayman. We have amazing human capital in our reinsurance sector and have an amazing geographical location. However, while our infrastructure — not roads — may be better, it is ageing and crumbling, while Cayman’s is improving with new roads, a state-of-the-art incinerator, and shopping and office developments popping up everywhere. Cayman grocery chains are expanding and offer as many variations of food products as Bermuda, if not more. Our hotel industry is largely stagnated while Cayman’s continues to grow massively.

We rely heavily on cruise ship visitors with reducing airlift, while Cayman’s airlift is growing every single day. There are direct flights to Cayman across ten different airlines flying from Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Havana, Houston, Kingston, La Ceiba (Honduras), London, Los Angeles, Miami, Montego Bay, Newark, New York, Philadelphia, Roatán (Honduras), Tampa, Toronto and Washington.

Cayman has done everything it can to attract overseas investment. It stole our lunch, and it did this very successfully by poaching the best legislation and ideas from Bermuda — and improving upon them. Cayman is now after our dinner. This is true in both the tourism sector and the international business sector. There are some who will make the argument that Cayman has room to grow because it has more land and Ken Dart is pouring billions into the island. While that is partly true, it is not an excuse for our failures. I and many others before me have made the argument that we, too, can still grow.

Growth requires proverbial out-of-the-box thinking:

• Allow taller buildings

• Liberalise planning laws

• Offer incentives to the private sector to poach public-sector workers to assist in a restructure and merging of some government departments

• Mutualise government departments, per the Free Democratic Movement’s suggestion

• Ring-fence the new corporate tax to pay down our disastrous debt levels, per the One Bermuda Alliance’s suggestion

• Sell underused and dilapidated government land and buildings for nationally important projects such as housing

• Repurpose soon-to-be disused schools as care homes for the elderly

• Provide better living quarters for our homeless and indigent

• Encourage development of abandoned private properties through incentive packages

• Extend the mandatory retirement age to 70 to assist our underfunded pension system

• Massively liberalise immigration policies to encourage direct inward investment

Do whatever we can to not just emulate Cayman’s success, as Cayman has emulated Bermuda’s, but do even better.

In other words, create an environment with fewer roadblocks to investment and residency, where the Ken Darts of the world want to be and invest!

Despite Bermuda business leaders publicly saying all is well, privately very different things are muttered, especially after libations. If we are not careful, international business will also be gone, albeit quietly and slowly. This is owing in part to the painfully slow work-permit process and the inability of mid-level managers — ie, non “job makers” — to be able to settle long term with their families and buy property.

After all, if you arrived in Bermuda in your late twenties and are now in your late thirties with a child or two, would you stick around with no certainty about your future when you could have been in Cayman with status and property of your own?

This loss of expertise is a serious risk factor in long-term planning for companies in Bermuda, despite best efforts to train and hire Bermudians. Oh, and before the naysayers spew the usual narrative that international business does not want to hire Bermudians, sure there are a few bad actors but the vast majority want to employ Bermudians to reduce the very risk factor I have identified. The issue is there just are not enough of us!

The Bermuda of old that so many talk about in various online forums is long gone. College Weeks is gone. The technical institute is gone. The United Bermuda Party is gone. A debt-free balance sheet is gone. The Bank of Bermuda is gone. Trimingham’s and Smith’s are gone. The departure balcony at the airport, bobbies without guns or stab vests, the 10,000 hotel beds, dozens of hotels and guesthouses, and the famed Bermuda hospitality are gone.

The large contingent of Scottish marching band members, numerous majorette and Gombey troupes, Mobylettes, the Deliverance, ties at dinner, the bakery at Crow Lane, and cricket and football games without the stench of cannabis are all gone. So are the City Hall fountain, the quaintness of St George, the Rosebank Theatre, Casemates, the Bermuda Sun, Bermuda Times, Bermuda Recorder and Mid-Ocean News.

These all may very well have been seen by many as part of the “good old days”, but I’m sick of hearing about it! We need to stop looking behind us and forge a new and better future!

We have this collective fear of new developments, new ideas, new businesses, new technology and new people coming here. Our mutual desire surely is to see Bermuda do better and grow, not shrink. While we appear to be so interested in the ideals of protectionism, we don’t even know any more what we are protecting, other than the occasional derelict building.

We constantly hang on to what once was, perhaps out of fear of the unknown. We spend too much time blaming others, finding excuses for inaction, and crying about how things once were, but the failures belong to us all. Complaining and the word “no” seem to be our Bermudian hobby. The only time the word “progressive” is uttered these days is when someone bothers to use the full name of the Progressive Labour Party. Cayman, on the other hand, is prepared to think and do differently.

Again, I ask you, do you want Bermuda to just slip farther or are you prepared to embrace change and do something different?

It is time to reclaim the top spot as an offshore international business jurisdiction and a first-class tourism destination. Ideas welcome!

• Michael Fahy was the Government Senate Leader and Cabinet minister in the One Bermuda Alliance government from 2012 to 2017. Thoughts or comments to opedfahy@gmail.com