Last week, we had the announcement that £36 million would be provided to create 8,000 firms within the Convergence Fund area of Wales during seven years from 2008 to 2013.
On first glance, it looks impressive but actually represents a significant reduction in funding for encouraging new enterprise in both funding and targets. Indeed, the Entrepreneurship Action Plan, over a period of five years, spent £60 million of Objective One funding to help create 14,000 new firms in Wales.
Therefore, with entrepreneurial activity remaining static for the last four years and well behind other small nations such as Ireland, it is surprising that the Assembly has not only failed to match its previous efforts, but that it lacks the ambition to emulate other successful enterprising economies. Given that there is going to a slowdown in the economy over the next couple of years, this is hardly the response that was needed.
Love bombing
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In London yesterday I learn a new verb.
The word that's being used to describe the sometimes subtle, sometimes none
too subtle wooing of the Liberal Dem...
44 minutes ago
6 comments:
Dylan its much worse on the ground , no support anywhere for anything,other than training courses you dont need.
i am so disgused with IWJ and his cohorts.
Dont they realise that enterprise is the driver of regeneration
PS Happy Birthday for yesterday xxx
I have also heard that one to one mentoring is being ditched in favour of classroom teaching. God help us
At first sight it does seem reasonable to compare Wales with Ireland, or it could be Scotland, or further afield with Norway. But then we get into the factors that make us different. One thing about Wales is a geographic split between north and south. Both north and south are tied in with Liverpool and Bristol areas respectively - as has been observed many times past. Other factors could include natural resources (e,g, Norway). Ireland of course is and island (with the north attached) and has a unique history - it hasn't all been plain sailing. It's probably more useful (this isn't going be popular) to compare Wales with a region of England. Or similar regions in continental Europe - which does happen and thats how Objective One status comes about.
All of that brings us back to Dylan's main point which is the effectiveness of our adminstration and its priorities. It seems to me to lack the single-mindedness necessary to tackle the economic problems of Wales.
I don't understand. How is that money spent creating new firms? Is this the start-up grant system? If so then it hasn't been available (in Carmarthenshire) for nearly 2 years anyway and the hoops you have to jump through to get it are ridiculous.
So I would endorse a reduction in money for creating 'new' firms, 95% of whom go under within 2yrs. What is needed is more support given to existing businesses in sectors that are contributing to the Welsh economy (like retail) to help them grow.
The single most effective and quickest way of getting support to business is to reduce business rates. Convergence funding should also go into new ways of enterprise and business support all of which has totally disappeared recently. Even though most of the agencies that delivered this are and were pretty useless they still fulfilled a function of being a trusted intermediary between business and government. This is need when money is involved because of mutual suspicion. They also do quite alot of tedious paperwork and red tape hacking.
95 per cent of new firms don't 'go under' in two years. According to BERR statistics, over 70 per cent are still surviving after three years http://stats.berr.gov.uk/ed/survival/htm/Key%20Results1.htm
Anon 10.46
Hmmm.The figures you refer to are for -'Survival Rates of VAT-Registered Enterprises, 1995-2004'.
We are in 2008 when I last looked. And what about the non-VAT self employed, I suppose they don't count then?
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