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    • Business plan 2008-2011
      • Context

Context

The Government Economic Strategy

Overall purpose

• To create a more successful country, with opportunities for all of Scotland to flourish, through increasing sustainable economic growth.
• Raise the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate to the UK level; and reduce emissions over the period to 2011.

Strategic priorities

• Match GDP growth rate of small EU countries (2017)
• Top quartile for productivity amongst trading partners (2017)
• Maintain labour market participation / close gap with top five OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) economies (2017)
• Match average European population growth (2007 to 2017)
• Increase overall income and proportion of income earned by the three lowest income deciles (2017)
• Narrow gap in participation between Scotland’s best and worst performing regions (2017)
• Reduce emissions by 80 per cent (2050)

Scottish Enterprise can make an important contribution to the full range of the Scottish Government’s strategic priorities for the economy and we have set out the ways in which we will do that.

Find out how Scottish Enterprise contributes to the Government economic strategy

However, in line with the outcome of the Enterprise Networks Review, our main focus will be in “developing a supportive business environment”.

Review of the Enterprise Networks

The reforms to the Enterprise Networks were announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth in September 2007. The main changes were:

• Scottish Enterprise to focus on supporting high growth businesses and improving the business environment in Scotland;
• Scottish Enterprise’s infrastructure activities to focus on projects of regional or national importance;
• a continuing focus on industries with the potential to thrive in a global economic context;
• both Careers Scotland and lead responsibility for skills to transfer to Skills Development Scotland; and
• Business Gateway and local regeneration activities to transfer to local authorities.

Spending Review Outcome

The recent Scottish Government spending review will mean reduced cash resources being available to Scottish Enterprise for the next three years until 2010/11. Following transfer of responsibilities to other organisations, the forecast resources available for 2008/11 are as follows:

As a result, we have a real challenge in delivering our growing pipeline of projects, and we will be prioritising activities that generate the biggest economic return on our investment. We will continue to seek greater leverage from the private sector while driving efficiency and effectiveness in our own operations. Tough decisions will have to be made in the full knowledge that not all of these decisions will be popular. For example we intend to reduce our salary costs by at least £10 million per annum (14 per cent). These savings are net of staff transferring to other organisations following the review of the Enterprise Networks.