The economy grew by 4% over the first nine months of 2023, compared with the same period of 2022, driven in large part by a doubling of tourist visits.
The Cayman Islands’ Third Quarter Economic Report 2023 from the Economics and Statistics Office (ESO) shows visits in the year to September doubled, relative to the first three quarters of the previous year, from around 600,000 to around 1.2 million.
Hotel and restaurant revenue, new work permits issued, and consumption of water and electricity were also substantially up.
Meanwhile registrations of new companies and partnerships were down by around a quarter, along with the number and value of building permits.
In the year to September 2023, the government paid off more than 10% of Cayman’s national debt, reducing the figure owed from $524.4 million the year before to $469 million, with the ESO noting that government has been deliberately working to reduce the debt balance since the second quarter of 2022.
The ESO reports that overall economic growth in developed countries mainly slowed in the period, with the exception of the US which grew by 4.9%.
However, Cayman’s growth of 4.0% is as good or better than any quarterly performance since the pandemic.
The strong performance has caused the ESO to revise upwards its projection of the year as a whole, now estimating that economic activities in the islands will be found to have increased 3.8% over 2023, with particularly strong growth expected in tourism and related sectors.
Air and cruise arrivals climb
The total number of tourist arrivals doubled to 1,259,792 for the first three quarters of the year, relative to 610,160 in the corresponding period of 2022.
Air arrivals were up 78.8% to 323,000 and cruise ship visitors soared by 118.1% to 937,000. However, neither figure has yet matched its pre-pandemic peak.
All sectors of the economy experienced some growth, with hotels and restaurants performing the best, up 26.4%.
Work permits were also substantially up, rising 11.6% to 36,079.
Cayman used 12.3% more water and 8.4% more electricity than in the comparable period in 2022.
An ESO spokeswoman linked the increases to the particularly high temperatures of last summer.
After reaching its highest value on record in the same period of 2022, building permit values declined by 27.9% to $591.8 million for the period.
This decline was attributed to four valuable hotel permits issued in 2022, totalling $297m, with no hotel permits issued in the first three quarters of 2023. Overall, the number of permits declined from 825 to 548.
Company registrations were down 23%, with every category experiencing a decline, from 9,750 to 7,519. New partnership registrations were down 28%.
Related Videos
