The Government’s pledge to revive the island’s ailing economy through taxpayer-funded initiatives is “a failure waiting to happen”, according to the One Bermuda Alliance.

Opposition leader Jarion Richardson spoke out after the Government last week acknowledged that key programmes outlined in its Economic Recovery Plan had been jettisoned.

The Government unveiled the ERP in March, 2021 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that there was “an urgent need to safeguard and secure our economic future”.

“It aims to combine fiscal responsibility with a clear path to growth, employment and greater economic equity,” a government statement announced.

The much trumpeted programme featured more than 30 initiatives that would push Bermuda’s economy out of the recession, the Government claimed.

But earlier this year, the Government announced that the ERP was to be scrapped and replaced by a new model — the Economic Recovery Strategy.

At a press conference last week, Jason Hayward, the Minister of Labour and the Economy, conceded that at least one of the four cornerstones of the original plan — gaming — was no longer on the Government’s radar.

Mr Hayward also acknowledged that other “key” initiatives — including a vertical-farming project and a proposed offshore fish-processing plant — were not a priority.

Last night, Mr Richardson claimed that Mr Hayward’s statement was “shocking but not surprising”.

He added that the Government had repeatedly made plans and given public assurances, but had failed to deliver results.

Mr Richardson said: “Plans without key deliverables, deadlines, milestones, resource allocations and cost centres always fail — they just fail in different ways.

“This Economic Recovery Plan failed on multiple points, including volume and variety. It attempted to do too many things at the same time, and those things were so different from each other, centralising and sharing resources that weren’t possible. The new economic recovery strategy could just as easily be called the Economic Recovery Plan 2.0.”

Mr Richardson argued that the Government had spread itself too thin in pushing for scores of new initiatives and needed to be more focused.

He said: “We recommend that the minister refine the economic recovery strategy to a much shorter list of deliverables, outline the measurable for those deliverables, with deadlines and milestones.

“This way, we can track the progress and success of the strategy. Cost estimates and resource allocations would further establish performance expectations.

“Admittedly, the country’s problems are so large it’s like trying to eat an elephant. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at time. The Government has to focus on bite-size achievable solutions, with each solution building on the next, to produce one large successful outcome.

“These plans are a mixed bag. They contain a smattering of ongoing initiatives that occur within government departments on a daily basis anyway, add a half-dozen alluring promises, mix it with financial industry feedback and with a flash and smoke, pull off the cloak to reveal what we tried before.”