As Brian Morgan pointed out in his article over at the IWA on the weekend ’It seems that (Welsh) economic policy is being driven more by politics than economics’ and you have to ask is today’s launch any more than a PR exercise and lip service, like so much that WAG has done in relation to the Welsh economy since it was set up.
If you were being generous you could give marks for effort to Ieuan Wyn Jones and his WAG colleagues for publishing the Economic Renewal Plan today, but im not having see what’s been announced today its what WAG should have been focusing on when the Assembly was first set up back in 1999, when inward investment was drying up fast and Wales was awarded Objective One European Funds, it should have been the catalyst needed to refocus efforts on more home grown business to create the jobs that were rapidly disappearing.
The fact it’s taken the geniuses in the Welsh Assembly Government eleven years to come to a conclusion that most serious economists, business people, financiers and political commentators had back then speaks volumes about the lack of engagement with Welsh business and political priorities from Labour in particular. It’s also good to see Rhodri Morgan’s decision to scrap the WDA roundly panned by people who actually know what they are talking about.
However as I have said previously the opposition parties aren’t free of blame, neither the Conservatives, Lib Dems or Plaid Cymru have managed to change economic arguments in Wales the last decade, we have arrived at this point because of external economic and global factors, not through any type of political leadership.
Finally I noticed that Andrew Davies, former Labour Economic Development Minister is preparing the ground for the policy when its fails by blaming the intransigence of Welsh Civil Servants because he put similar plans in place a few years back and it failed to produce any discernible results (ahem), so what does it say about Welsh Ministers and the state of Welsh Government that they are letting Civil Servants dictate progress on something as important as economic development, aren’t Minister supposed to be the ones in charge?
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