Data makes our decline clear – but we can rise again

I’M hoping this column will give a flavour of our current regional economic climate from the Chamber’s perspective of representing around 2,500 businesses.

It’s a mix of slightly worrying statistics but also some very positive insights.

Let’s get the challenging stuff out of the way first.

In the Chamber we’re at the forefront of helping North East businesses get their goods and services overseas.

Over the past couple of years this hasn’t been easy, so it was with great interest I read the latest international trade statistics.

The figures, produced by HMRC, make clear we’re not anywhere near where we were before leaving the EU and pre-Covid. In fact, we’re down by more than 12% since 2019, with our figure for 2021 at £24bn.

Our trade is slowly making up some of that ground but it worries me that our trajectory is not at the pace of the upward trend of the rest of the UK as yet.

We knew leaving the EU would be tricky for our economy as they are still our major economic neighbours.

Our region does more business with them than the rest of the UK as well, hence the challenges being greater.

A bit more Government support would go a long way to ease trading difficulties.

I also want to stress these figures are there on the Government’s website in black and white and we’ve analysed them with our usual objective integrity.

Now to the good news part. Last week I had the absolute pleasure of meeting more of our regional business owners in person and in one day than has been possible in the past two years.

The NE Expo was a tremendous showcase of so many inspirational and innovative companies.

You could tell from the buzz at the whole event that people are relishing being back out ready to network and make connections.

For many of the visitors and exhibitors it was probably their own first occasion of being able to meet a number of contacts in person, rather than on screen.

I also picked up a real thirst for knowledge and growth, with busy seminars on everything from wellbeing to growing sales.

It was fitting the Expo was held at the Falcons rugby ground as the occasional cheer for a player practising his goal-kicking out on the pitch was matched by the celebratory atmosphere inside.

We’re definitely on the winning side in our region and there’s much still to play for.