To the usual chorus of well rehearsed arguments, Wales’s GVA figures for 2009 were published on the 8th December 2010 by the Office for National Statistics and showed Welsh GVA now standing at 74.3%, 0.2% lower than last year and continuing the downward trend over the past decade or so leaving Wales the poorest of any nation or region in the UK.
To be fair the Welsh press reported the new figures and some thin analysis to go with it, but they were more interested in the fact that we had qualified for another tranche of European Funding because our GVA is so awful. A few bloggers picked it up and added their thoughts but that was it, the awful GVA figures got lost in the pre Christmas noise as they are always supposed to do.
The issue was revived briefly last week by the Tories and Lib Dems in the Senedd Chamber in a debate on the GVA figures, but it wasn’t reported anywhere as if often the case with Assembly debates, but it also reinforces the view that economic debate isn’t important in Wales.
Or maybe it’s because the economic arguments are so well worn and the Welsh Assembly Government refuses to accept that there are problems with its own new shiny economic plans published back in July last year who knows.
Maybe the debate needs fresh impetus, I wrote back in August to ask why WAG doesn’t produce up to date quarterly or 6 monthly GVA figures while the Scottish and Catalan Government’s somehow manage to do just that, it makes me wonder how long can WAG keep claiming that they want a better economy when they are continually planning economic policy with data that is always more than 12 months old?
Sadly and not for the first time, this leaves me asking is there any real appetite for rational economic debate among the Welsh political class or is Welsh economic debate destined to go round in circles repeating the same old arguments every 12 months after another set of predictably awful GVA figures are published?Any source
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