Speaking to the Seychelles Nation, Ahmed Afif, managing director of the Seychelles International Business Authority (SIBA) envisaged a doubling in the number of offshore services providers, an increase in the number of licensed offshore banks from one to five, the establishment of a business park and significant growth in the 150-strong workforce currently employed by the offshore sector.

The plan comes shortly after SIBA brought together the various communities making up the country's offshore financial services industry earlier in August to discuss a new strategy for the sector's future development. The two-day conference marked the first occasion that all of the key players in the Seychelles offshore industry have assembled to discuss how to kick-start growth in the sector. Participants included representatives from financial institutions, regulatory bodies, the tax department, and the civil aviation and port authorities.

The conference, described by Mar Afif as "focused and harmonised," agreed that offshore service providers must begin to pull together in one direction in order to attract more clients to the Seychelles, rather than compete against each other for their business.

Mr Afif also stressed that the offshore industry must seek to overcome the problems occurring in the domestic industry by convincing new clients that the offshore sector is "divorced from the domestic problems."