Written evidence from the City of Bradford
Metropolitan District Council
1. The enquiry is designed to examine the effectiveness
of government policy and actions on trade and investment. Topics
the Committee will consider include; The role of BIS in providing
support for exports and investment; How the Government measures
success in its support for trade and investment; The Government
Trade White Paper; The role of UKTI with regard to identifying
opportunities in: established markets, emerging markets and key
sectors.
2. The delivery of trade and inward investment
work has been carried out by Yorkshire Forward and UKTI. The City
of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (CBMDC), in common with
most local authorities has not had the resources required to undertake
foreign direct investment work. CBMDC's investment team, Invest
in Bradford's (IIB) involvement has been limited predominantly
to responding to specific inward enquiries generated that match
the locational requirements of the potential investor. UKTI and
YF provided this fdi enquiry feed to local authorities. The number
of enquiries provided to IIB has fallen sharply in recent years
but were most welcome and IIB would like to understand how this
will be maintained and how current enquiries will be progressed.
Bradford Chamber, Yorkshire Forward and UKTI have undertaken work
specifically designed to encourage exports with IIB not typically
involved.
3. IIB's primary objectives are to encourage
and assist with job creation within the district, particularly
in the region's target sectors. This proactive work is carried
out in competition with other locations across the world. The
team access various data sources to constantly monitor for companies
in the UK who may be looking to invest and then approach them.
The team assist potential inward or indigenous investors with
issues relating to delivering investment projects. Investment
projects within the district could be triggered by a wide variety
of factors including merger and acquisition and competitiveness
issues, consolidation or expansion. Expansion could be driven
by an increase in export business but IIB do not track this specifically
as the promotion of trade is, as outlined above, been delivered
by others.
4. IIB also account manages a number of businesses
within the district. The Key Account Management programme, delivered
jointly with YF, targets 58 major employers within the district
(employing more than 200 employees). 28 of these are ultimately
foreign owned. The data collected by the KAM activity was also
fed back to UKTI, presumably for them to map the overall employment
and investment trends in the UK's major overseas owned businesses.
5. Within the district there are at least 11
businesses owned by Asian business people or British people of
Asian origin within the top 200 employers in the district and
they employ almost 1,100 people between them.
Examples include P.E.C. Building & Shopfitting
(set up by former President of Bradford Chamber, Balbir Panesar,
in 1977 and now employing almost 100 people) and Dilbag Cloth
House (set up in 1968 by Dilbag Singh, who had arrived from Punjab
earlier in the decade, and now employing around 60 people in Bradford).
There are of course many smaller BME businesses with fewer employees
located across the whole district. They are involved in a variety
of sectors including food manufacturing, retail and textiles.
6. The Bradford business community is well connected
with South Asia and there is a significant level of trade between
Bradford and Asian countries. Bradford Chamber has run trade missions
to India and Pakistan in the last four years and in October 2009,
The Asian Business Development Network (ABDN), assisted by the
Council organised an Asian Business Roundtable Event. The event
was attended by prominent Asian businesses and key business support
partners e.g. Asian Trade Link (ATL-who are based within Bradford)
and was designed to help companies access support and explore
joint trading between Bradford and the sub-continent.
7. With the demise of Yorkshire Forward and the
proposed "nationalisation" of inward investment work
local authorities are keen to understand about the role of UKTI.
Chiefly, how the enquiries which have been generated and passed
to them by YF will now be facilitated and what role will local
authority investment teams deliver in this process.
According to IIB's client management system, 11 international
enquiries were fielded by IIB (most from YF) since September 2008.
Two of them were significant enquiries from major Indian companies
concerning call centre operations during the last 15 months. The
enquiries could have seen 700 jobs created.
8. In terms of the number and size of FDI projects
within the district, since the start of 2008-09, IIB is aware
of at least 10 FDI projects in the district, including the creation
of a new Jurys Inn hotel, which opened this year, and relocation
projects of Italian- owned Transmec Group and German- owned Rhenus
Logistics. Their total value was £100 million.
January 2011
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