February 28, 2013Dear Sir,I would like to comment on something that I saw or rather did not see in the current Budget. This Budget like all others is all about increasing revenue through raising taxes, but what is missing is an increase in revenue through developing a third pillar of our economy. I find it quite interesting that the Progressive Labour Party says that they are interested in a ‘Blue Economy’ yet there was never a ‘Research and Development Budget’ during their reign. If the One Bermuda Alliance is a ‘horse of a different colour’ as they purport then I expect some funds to be set aside for research and development, but their business pedigree dictates ‘buy what we need’ or ‘hire the most qualified person so that we can hit the ground running’. We need a third, fourth and fifth pillars of our economy to decouple Bermuda from the US. But due to the bankrupt policy of ‘Government not getting involved in business’, we will continue to be handcuffed and shackled.I have a vision of a financial product that will compete with MasterCard and Visa. The Catch-22 situation is that before we can go international with this system, we have to develop and use it 100 percent here. I do not think that any bank here would be interested because they are making enough money from their MC/Visa relationship and my system will mean making less money locally. Ideally, the Government would implement such a payment system and eschew MC/Visa thus saving on those fees but the government is not interested in moving forward. For those of you who do not know, in the USA alone for the year 2006 there were 21.7 billion credit card transactions and 25.3 billion debit card transactions. The market for payment processing is huge but the caveat is that there will not be a lot of local jobs created but because the Government’s tax structure is based on how many people a company employs and no how profitable said company is — then there is little incentive for Government involvement unless they have an equity stake.In short, Government not only has to think outside the box but also outside the reef line. Government should be encouraging business to expand globally via investment in such endeavours with those entities paying tax on their global profits.POLITICAL. DIVIDE. BDA