BERMUDA GOVERNMENT AND CHAMBER OF COMMERCE DIFFER ON COST OF LIVING RELIEF

The Bermuda government and the territory’s Chamber of Commerce have clashed over government proposals to alleviate the cost of living.

The government has put forward a Cost-of-Living Commission Amendment Bill outlining its proposed approach to tackling the rising cost of living. It also said the objective is to strengthen Bermuda’s legislative framework for price transparency and enhance the work of the Cost of Living Commission. But according to the Chamber, the projected benefits to consumers are minimal and the measures have a disproportionate impact on the private sector.

Outlining the measures, Bermuda’s Minister of Home Affairs, Alexa Lightbourne, said: “Greater price transparency will help us understand pricing trends, assess pressures across the market, and build the evidence required for targeted action. Better information will support the work of the Commission, give consumers greater visibility and strengthen the Government’s ability to develop policies that can deliver meaningful, long-term improvements in affordability.”

She also stated that the amendments modernise the Commission’s framework by moving beyond a fixed list of individual goods to broader categories of essential commodities.

The Chamber has outlined its position in a review paper titled ‘How Many Pieces of Legislation to Verify $3 a Week? A Chamber position paper on the concerns of regulatory overreach in Bermuda’. It states that “this direction of regulatory design is not proportionate to the household benefit it advertises, is not consistent with the Chamber’s stated position of November 2024 nor with the Ministry’s own statements at the June 2025 Cost of Living Summit.”

The Chamber’s conclusion is that the government’s efforts are “unlikely to reduce what Bermudian families pay at the (cash)register.”

It said: “On the Minister of Home Affairs’ own House-floor arithmetic of 17 July 2026, the grocery duty relief the Bill exists to verify amounts to $4.6 million a year on approximately $50.7 million of grocery imports. Spread across approximately 30,000 Bermudian households, that is on the order of $150 per household per year – roughly $3 per household per week. Duty relief in that range is welcome; any amount that leaves the household is meaningful.”

However, it goes on to say: “The question this paper puts before the reader is why the Government has advanced or supported four legislative and regulatory instruments under the Cost-of-Living Act alone in the past six months, alongside the parallel Ministerial-override proposals under the Bank Fee Regulations consultation and the Electricity Amendment Act 2026, all in the name of verifying a $3 per week pass through.”

The proposed legislation has stalled in the Bermuda Senate and is being reviewed. The Chamber has submitted a set of alternative proposals to the government.