Surely even doomsayers will toast this success

ANALYSIS THE latest foreign direct investment figures for Scotland provide a great deal of room for cheer, with the number of such projects attracted hitting a third consecutive record annual high.

Not at all surprisingly, Brexit provided the only significant reason for concern in EY’S latest annual survey of foreign direct investment (FDI) activity, with the UK’S attractiveness to overseas companies clearly being hit by the EU exit folly.

The UK’S share of the European FDI market has fallen further, to 18% last year from 19% in 2016. It had been 21% in 2015. Scotland’s share of the European FDI market fell too, as the UK electorate’s Brexit vote weighed. Encouragingly though, Scotland’s share of FDI attracted to the UK rose from 9.5% in 2016 to 9.6% last year.

What is particularly encouraging is that Scotland was again the top UK location in terms of the number of research and development projects from overseas players won in 2017.

As well as enjoying success in attracting such generally high-value-added activity, the number of jobs secured as a result of overall FDI into Scotland rose by 104% from 3,131 in 2016 to 6,374 last year. So it looks as if Scotland struck a good balance last year in terms of winning sophisticated inward investment but also attracting large numbers of jobs from overseas investors.

There has been much doomsaying about the Scottish economy which undoubtedly, like the UK as a whole, faces considerable challenges.

Hopefully, even the doomsayers will celebrate Scotland’s continuing success on the inward investment front.