Arlene Foster made the comments during a parliament meeting this week while being asked about a recent British-Irish Council meeting.
‘I acknowledge the population of Jersey is smaller than ours in Northern Ireland but one of the initiatives that impressed me comprised of the local government issuing every adult with a pre-paid credit card to the value of £100. The credit can only be spent in local businesses,’ she said.
‘I know our economy minister Diane Dodds is looking at something similar, possibly around a voucher scheme.’
According to Jersey’s government, the £100 voucher scheme was forecast to cost £11 million to implement and was estimated to have injected £10 million into the economy.
Some shops and bars reported that their takings had doubled while the scheme was in place.
Treasury Minister Susie Pinel has not ruled out loading Islanders Spend Local cards with a further £100.
‘We have said that we might do another round but we will have to evaluate quite where people spent their money,’ she said.
‘We need to know whether it was largely spent in retail or hospitality and we have got to gather that data and evaluate it over the coming months. We should know what the situation is by the end of January or early February.’
During lockdown, a large number of food retailers reported soaring sales with many consumers being forced to eat at home.
Asked whether a second Spend Local scheme could be targeted away from supermarkets and towards industries that were struggling, Deputy Pinel said: ‘We did look at that but there is the question of what is food retail? Is it a big UK brand supermarket or a small corner shop?
‘It just got too difficult but it could be just targeted at hospitality as that is an industry that has suffered hugely.’
A similar scheme was implemented in Malta in July when every resident aged 16 and over was given 100 euros worth of vouchers.
Under the rules of the scheme, 60 euros had to be spent in restaurants and 40 had to be spent on goods and services. It was estimated that the scheme had injected 37 million euros into the economy.
The Maltese government deemed the scheme so successful that it began handing out a second round of vouchers to its residents last month.
