MARCH: WARNINGS AS ARTICLE 50 IS TRIGGERED
A busy year continued for Prime Minister Theresa May as she penned a letter to European Council president Donal Tusk, triggering Article 50.
This means the clock is ticking on a two-year process, at the end of which the UK will have left the EU.
The move is welcomed by Brexiteers in her party as bringing certainty to the process of leaving the EU, and is welcomed by the DUP.
But Retail NI chief executive Glyn Roberts said the triggering of Article 50 highlights “real concerns for the future”.
“Triggering Article 50 is the start of a huge process of economic, social and political change for Northern Ireland and it remains to be seen if this change will be positive for our local economy. Certainly leaving the single market and customs union is neither positive for our retail sector or local economy as a whole.”
One of the bestknown names in Northern Ireland’s food industry gained a new private equity owner. Cookstown, based in Co Tyrone, is the owner of the brand of sausages popularised by footballer George Best in a famous advertising campaign. Cookstown owner Karro Food Group was taken over by London PE firm CapVest. Karro chief executive Seamus Carr from Warrenpoint, Co Down, will remain as chief executive.
The ripples of the collapse of Stormont continue as it’s revealed that an April 2018 deadline for the devolution of corporation tax here will be pushed back. After a campaign going back as far as two decades, the business world is disappointed.
Angela McGowan, regional director of the CBI, told the Belfast Telegraph: “CBI member companies recognise that Northern Ireland’s international reputation is compromised when politicians commit to policy actions and then fail to deliver them.”
In its promotional material, economic development agency Invest NI removed a reference to the April 2018 date for devolving the tax here.
Ann McGregor, chief executive of NI Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that if political stalemate results in the loss of the change to lower corporation tax, “the region will have lost the best opportunity ever to attractive inward investors”.