Assistance from Invest Northern Ireland led to a huge increase in jobs and investment in the new Newry Mourne and Down super council area in 2013/14, it has emerged. End of the year results show 576 new jobs were promoted by Invest NI during the year – an increase of 111per cent on the previous 12 month period. The new employment opportunities are resulting from an increase of 16 per cent in offers to companies, a 27 per cent rise in assistance provided and a 49 per cent growth in total investment. Invest NI’s successful Jobs Fund promoted 212 new jobs a 72 per cent rise on the year before. Invest NI support also contributed to company investment in research and development worth £3m and representing a 27 per cent increase on 2012/2013. Mark Bleakney Invest NI’s Southern Regional Manager said: “All the indicators suggest that business confidence in the Newry Mourne Down council area is strengthening and more companies are now seeking to position themselves to benefit as economic recovery gathers momentum. “Invest NI’s initiatives such as the Jobs Fund and the support for the R&D projects have been encouraging companies to bring forward activities that will enable them to compete for effectively and successfully particularly in markets outside Northen Ireland.” Invest NI has put in place processes to enable accurate reporting of the actual number of jobs created as a direct result of the projects which it had assisted. IN doing so Invest NI is the first development agency in the UK or ROI to report in this way across all its job support initiatives. “We now have the ability to analyse all offers of financial support which were ‘live’ at the beginning of our Corporate Plan Period (2011/12) and extracted job creation against these offers. This shows that 2,199 new jobs have been created in total in Newry Mourne and Down aver the last three years,” added Mr Bleakney.
Newry Democrat
15th July 2014
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