When will Scottish manufacturing exports pick up?
Statistics out last week showed them falling 1.4% in the last quarter of 2012, meaning that, despite some lurching towards recovery, they are still around 10% down on their pre-recession level. Food and drink is a relative bright spot, edging up 1.5%.
David Lonsdale of CBI Scotland urges calm. He said: "[While] the dip in exports over last year is disappointing, it will hopefully prove short-lived as [our survey] reported a slight uptick in export orders in the first three months of this year, and improving confidence over export prospects for the year ahead."
"Breaking into new markets can be a huge leap for SMEs, which is why we need a new tax credit to help them get a foothold internationally. The devolved administration can assist by helping to establish more direct air connections".
Time for some bold action on that front.
Agenda suspects that the First Minister must rue the day he offered Professor John Kay, one of Britain's most influential economists, a seat in his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). The Scots boffin from Oxford and the London School of Economics is invariably referred to as a "former Salmond adviser" when his many utterances – rarely favourable to the SNP cause – are quoted in the press.
While it was an excellent idea of the first SNP administration to draw on the brainpower of some of the world's top economic thinkers, it only works as intended if you retain a measure of control over what the "independent" advisers say. Kay – who may have owed his presence on the CEA to the politically naive former minister Jim Mather (a fan) – was not temperamentally suited to debates trammelled along a party line, and by mutual agreement, did not reappear on the council in the second term.
Now he is using his FT opinion slot to poke gentle fun at the Scottish Government's plans for post-independence currency, saying emphatically that Scotland could expect to fail to secure a "Sterling Zone" on favourable terms and should prepare to create its own currency.
He wrote: "The question that remains is what to call the new money. Perhaps the Scots crown, or the pound Scots. But I prefer the resonance of the coin first minted by the father of Mary Queen of Scots – the bawbee."
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