A £100,000 public relations campaign is being planned to ‘correct misconceptions’ about the Island’s finance industry.
The problem has arisen because Jersey is in the process of signing up to Tax Information Exchange Agreements with a number of other countries and has already done so with the United States and the Netherlands.
Jersey Finance says that some competitor jurisdictions, in particular Switzerland, have been using this to their competitive advantage to create negative publicity about the Island’s alleged lack of banking confidentiality.
Economic Development Minister Philip Ozouf said it had been generally accepted that the signing of the TIEAs had benefits, but at the same time there had been negative consequences.
‘We are facing particularly strong competition from Switzerland. But in fact we have excellent banking privacy in Jersey,’ he said.
