The International Business Forum (IBF) expects to have questions in place for a meeting with the Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety Terry Lister about work permit term limits within the next few weeks.

And according the chairman of the independent business committee, Jan Spiering, it could take as little as six months for them to thrash out problems with the term limits with Government.

When asked how discussions with Government were going on the prickly subject of term limits, Mr. Spiering said: "We have only really just started..."

There has been a great deal of concern over term limits of work permits within the business community. The term limits became policy in 2001, which was to be considered year zero. Then employees on work permits would have six years, and key employees would have a further three years to stay on the Island.

This will mean, as it stands that all foreigners on work permits who were here in 2001 will have to leave in 2007. Those who are considered to be "key" employees will be allowed to stay on for a further three years - to 2010, but no further.

Employers have said that the system is unworkable and it will lead to businesses leaving the Island. Others have deemed the system as "social engineering" and pandering to the "political racists".

Mr. Lister has been in discussion with business groups over the issue, but has said that he personally would like to see the limits stay at nine years.

The IBF said it has been working on behalf of the business community to "work out" problems with the Department of Immigration and help "put flesh on the bones" of the policy agreed to in 2001. Mr. Spiering said that the first job the immigration committee of the International Business Forum had was trying to help immigration through their back log.

"We have taken the first step has been to get from all the business organisations there burning questions so we are that stage in the process, which is weeks off. Our next step would be to appoint a group to go through each of those questions and get answers from immigration for those questions. We are still at too early a stage for me to comment on you know how the process going, but certainly we have met with enthusiastic support from immigration in how we have depicted how the process may work going forward."

Mr. Spiering said that the immigration committee was set up by the IBF at the end of last year when they started hearing more and more questions from the business community about the term limits and the processing of work permits and the time it was taking.

He said that the first thing it did was loan two workers to the immigration department to help them with the backlog of work permits caused by staff dealing with long term residents and new passports.

He added: "Now what we are trying to concentrate on is to really determine what the policies are to support the new immigration requirements."

And the group is currently canvassing businesses to find out what the issues are, before trying to find a way forward with the Minister.

"(We will) try and actually develop the answers to the question to form part of the policy ... so we take out some of the guessing that is currently going on," he added.

But he said that he had few answers to pressing questions thrown up by the term limit policies, but these would be worked out as time went on.

And he said it did not matter who won the election as the matter was a Bermuda issue not a party issue.

"The vibrancy of international business has been well reported, the importance of international business to the economy is fully understood by everybody," said Mr. Spiering.

"Now it is a question of let us get down into the detail to make sure we can meet our twin objectives which is to provide Bermudians with the best opportunities that we can provide and at the same time ensure that we have a vibrant international business community here and I think it is very possible to do that, but it is going to be hard."