Member Article

North needs to regain foreign investment levels

More than 120 thousand new jobs could be created in the North over 10 years, if the North’s share of foreign direct investment (FDI) returned to the levels of the RDA’s tenure, suggests a new report.

IPPR’s ‘UK First? Improving Northern access to Foreign Direct Investment’ refers to Nissan and Siemens as examples of FDI successes.

The report says the number of FDI projects secured over the last few years has dropped 27% since 2010, while the number of London projects has increased by 19% during the same period.

In order to encourage greater inward investment, the report’s authors, recommend a greater share of Whitehall resource to be devolved to strengthen the capacity of city regions to seek opportunities; changes to the way government monitors investment, with less emphasis on counting the number of new projects and more on the success of existing ones; and a “pan-northern” investment body to develop opportunities at a significant scale.

IPPR North director Ed Cox said: “It is very worrying to see that a key element of the North’s economic success in recent decades has been declining in the past 3 years. If it continues, this can only make the imbalance in the UK economy even worse than it is already.

“It is clear that the Coalition’s current approach to attracting inward investment in the North is not working. But our report shows there are steps that can be taken to improve it. It is vital that action is taken to allow the UK to maintain its place as the leading place to invest in Europe, and for the whole of the UK to contribute to that ambition.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .