REPORTS of rising activity and optimism from firms in a range of sectors, in Scottish Chambers of Commerce's latest quarterly survey, make welcome reading.
And Scottish Government figures yesterday showed the economy north of the Border grew by 0.7% in the third quarter - an above-trend pace.
Scottish Chambers' survey, published today, signals solid increases in activity in the manufacturing, construction, retail and tourism sectors.
But the business organisation is not getting carried away with its positive survey findings.
In particular, Scottish Chambers highlights a further deterioration in cash flow for Scottish manufacturers and the consequent need to ensure that there is sufficient availability of funding to enable firms to invest in capacity to meet rises in demand.
It also flags the continuing weakness of growth in Scottish manufacturers' exports, noting tough conditions in key eurozone markets.
These two observations are astute.
And they highlight the key problem with the recovery so far, both in Scotland and the UK as a whole.
In contrast to the Coalition Government's declared strategy, the recovery has been driven in large part by hard-pressed consumers, who still collectively have high levels of debt, rather than by business investment and exports.
We should not underestimate the seriousness of this lack of balance in the recovery. And we would do well to heed Scottish Chambers' warning that the recovery is fragile.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article