Business: Pauline Smith, managing director of Greenwave, with her own take on the Manx Budget

The Budget is often the only time in the year where Government has the opportunity to interact with the general population.

This means there is a great deal of strategy to fit in alongside the figures. The Budget speech this year runs to 50 pages and the ‘Pink Book’ (which contains the detailed breakdown of the Budget) is 130 pages.

Additionally, the Programme for Government guides the Government’s strategic planning and priorities for funding in the Budget.

With better than expected tax revenues the Treasury Minister had more freedom to provide for public spending and provide tax breaks to help individuals, families and businesses and for those relocating to the island.

While the Budget contains a huge amount of positive news for the island, annual costs are still greater than income and the public sector pension deficit looms in 2022.

However, as the Budget title suggests the Government are confident they can deal with this, while also providing more public funding and tax breaks – all good news indeed.

On a more personal level I am interested as to how the Government strategy and Budget helps business owners and entrepreneurs on the island, particularly for technology businesses. As I also run a business in Wales it gives an opportunity to contrast the two. I have found there are many similarities (but acknowledge stark contrasts such as employment levels).

Collating my own observations and those of clients I have come up with a top five of entrepreneur concerns:

Access to funding: There are more than 400 types of potential funding available to my business in Wales (admittedly nearly 20% from European funding). This remains a very difficult area in the Isle of Man with banks and government funding struggling with non asset based businesses and a shortage of island based investors.

Broadband: In Wales grants of up to £10,000 can be pooled together with other business owners meaning 1gb broadband will be available this year in a picturesque but technically challenging location in Wales. Meanwhile in the Isle of Man hyper fast broadband remains a distant promise outside of Douglas.

Environment: Wales has pledged to a fossil free future. The island, with its biosphere status, should be leading the way. The complete lack of any mention of strategies or funding to tackle climate change and not just deal with the impacts of climate change were conspicuous by their absence in this year’s Manx Budget.

Ease of doing business: The digital strategy for the Isle of Man Government is imperative and urgent but the finishing post seems to be many years away. In the UK it takes minutes to submit online whilst taking weeks in the island with paper documents being posted to clients and then on to the relevant authority.

Community and sense of belonging: The Isle of Man doesn’t have an entrepreneur ecosystem or strong entrepreneur community … yet, but it does have a very strong sense of general community which is difficult to find in larger areas.

All this being said the Isle of Man does remains true to the strapline of being a great place to live and work, our economy and finances remain the envy of many countries and with the continuing dedication of government and the private sector we can be a ground-breaking entrepreneur hub and environmental trailblazer.