Chief Minister Alfred Cannan has insisted he remains committed to a planned increase in the minimum wage due to come into force in April 2026, while acknowledging the significant pressure the move could place on some Isle of Man businesses.

Responding to questions in the House of Keys on Tuesday morning, during the final sitting of 2025, Mr Cannan said the Council of Ministers was ‘mindful of the pressures that increased wages place on some of the island’s businesses’.

He told members that Tynwald had agreed last week that the Treasury and the Department for Enterprise should consider options to support firms transitioning to higher wage costs.

‘The Minister for Enterprise confirmed work was already underway to review such options,’ he said, adding that a further update would be provided once those options had been fully considered, with the intention of making a formal announcement ‘early in the new year’.

Pressed on concerns about the wider economy, including a reported fall in GDP and the scale of the proposed 9.9% minimum wage increase compared to inflation of 2.8%, the Chief Minister said economic data on the island was ‘incredibly slow’.

‘What I said actually, Mr Speaker, was that our data was incredibly slow, and we did need to speed up in terms of production of data so we had more up-to-date information,’ he said.

He added that more recent figures showed a ‘7.8% rise in GNP’, which he said many members regarded as a ‘proper measure for success on the island’, and pointed to ‘incredibly low unemployment’ locally compared with rising joblessness in neighbouring jurisdictions.

Mr Cannan acknowledged the scale of the change facing employers, saying the increase would ‘culminate effectively in something like a 60% increase in minimum wages in a less than five-year period’.

‘We acknowledge that’s difficult,’ he said. ‘We’re working on support, direct, indirect support that will ease some of those pressures.’