In a response published in Britain’s Guardian newspaper to a recent article concerning the announcement of the Cayman Islands government’s need to address its current budgetary issues, Charles Jennings, a joint managing partner of local law firm Maples and Calder, says such reports are “misguided.”

Further, he says, the Cayman Islands is not a secretive tax haven. It has a transparent and properly regulated financial services industry.

Clearly, Mr Jennings’ comments are part of the ongoing effort by the financial services industry here to change public perception of the Cayman Islands but, judging from the reaction of Guardian readers to the article, there is still a long way to go.

Curiously, the individuals for the most part in the public eye in this public relations effort are all associated with Maples and Calder. Apart from current partner Mr Jennings, the Chairman of the Cayman Islands Financial Services Association (CIFSA) is a former partner, Anthony Travers, and another former partner, Tim Ridley, the former chairman of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), has been outspoken in recent months on the realities of Cayman’s status as an offshore financial centre compared to the perceptions.

However, Mr Jennings and his colleagues are always going to have a hard time rebutting the presumption that the Cayman Islands is a “secrecy jurisdiction” while our bank secrecy law – the Confidential Relationships (Preservation) Law – remains on the books in substantially its current form.

For some months now, we have been advocating its effective repeal and we have also been joined by some financial sector voices along the same lines.

Regrettably, the previous administration did nothing at all in this respect and there is so far scant evidence that the current government is doing much more. If something is being done, it would be a good idea for an announcement to be made so that the Cayman public and the world at large are aware that the government is not just sitting on its hands.

We have referred on previous occasions to the so-called peer review of Cayman’s ongoing compliance with the OECD standards of financial standards and pointed out in particular that the continued existence of our bank secrecy law may well be counterproductive to a successful completion of this process.

It is difficult for the public at large to agree with Mr Jennings’ claim that Cayman has not prospered as a “secretive tax haven” as a result of a lack of transparency when such opacity is enshrined in our law.

Even the much-touted tax information exchange agreement with the United States, which has been in place since as long ago as 2001, has not prevented the United States Congress from classifying the Cayman Islands as a “secrecy jurisdiction” in the latest and all previous incarnations of the so-called “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act”.

Further, the almost daily reports in the overseas media of some fraudster or another “hiding” money in Cayman Islands’ accounts do nothing to counter this perception. The “secrecy” benefits of owning and operating Cayman accounts, whether real or perceived, need to be removed legislatively, with concomitant publicity.

It is a pity that this newspaper’s warnings regarding the global perception of the Cayman Islands were ignored for so many years, but we all must live and deal with the present situation, not as we would rather it had been.

As, perhaps, the exception that proves the rule that all public comment is currently being made by present and former partners of Maples and Calder, Ian Bancroft, managing director of the Isle of Man subsidiary of our very own homegrown financial institution, Cayman National Bank, has also gone into bat in print for our national situation.

In an interview published this week in an Isle of Man newspaper, Mr Bancroft makes the point that the Cayman Islands crisis is “exaggerated”.

This may well be the case but it is difficult to appreciate when Cayman businesses and residents are struggling to make ends meet with no positive outcome or solution in sight.

Once again, Mr Bancroft’s comments also illustrate the apparent disconnect between what the private sector is saying and the absence of either official announcements that support the claims or corresponding facts.

For example, it is all very well saying that the “government has already put in place arrangements with local banks for short term borrowing to meet the current funding gap,” if in the next breath it is necessary to acknowledge that Britain has denied approval for such borrowing.

The fact that such financing is in place seems to us to be pretty meaningless if we’re not allowed to utilise it.