NI: Development agency fails to curb unemployment
Jobs were being lost faster than they were being created despite hundreds of millions of pounds being invested by the North’s economic development agency during its first three years in operation, it was revealed today.
Invest Northern Ireland spent over £400m (€596.6m) supporting economic projects between 2002 and 2005 while overall employment in its client companies dropped by 4,700.
The figures were detailed in a Performance Report covering the first three years after Invest Northern Ireland was created from a group of separate economic agencies.
The net employment losses were despite thousands of jobs being created with Invest NI financial assistance over the period.
Invest NI does not measure its performance purely on jobs, and puts great store on the expansion of exports by its client companies and the level of innovation in products or processes achieved.
The economic agency was quick to say the drop in employment in its client companies was down to the huge fall off in employment of around 50% in the manufacturing sector – especially textiles – over the three years.
A spokesman said similar falls were recorded by Enterprise Ireland in the Irish Republic and agencies like themselves in other parts of the UK.
Without the job creation efforts of Invest NI the situation could have been a whole lot worse.
The report highlighted that over the three year period it offered assistance of just over £400m towards projects which plan to invest over £1.5bn (€2.24bn) within the Northern Ireland economy.
Over 8,800 offers were made to help individuals start a business. Not all start-ups survived, but INI estimates some 7,800 jobs were created.
A further 6,500 were created through foreign direct investment by companies either new to Northern Ireland or those expanding.
The value of exports generated by Invest NI client companies increased, in real terms, by 12.5% to £4.2bn (€6.26bn).
Almost 70% of the agency’s small or medium sized client companies introduced some degree of product or process innovation – compared with 39% for other local businesses and 62% for a comparative British sample.
Launching the report, Invest NI chief executive Leslie Morrison said it marked an important stage in the maturity of the organisation and should be seen as a first step towards the production of meaningful performance indicators.
“The business of economic development is complex. Invest NI cannot take credit for all the positive consequences associated with our activities, just as we cannot take full responsibility for addressing all of the economic difficulties faced by Northern Ireland.”
Information presented in the report should be treated with care, he said. “There are clearly many factors which influence the performance of our clients, only one of which is assistance received from Invest NI.”
He added that performance measures provided the feedback signals required to evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies and actions.
However he said: “We acknowledge that further work is required to understand better the connections between our interventions and their consequences.”
