At the dawn of a new year as heavy with challenges as any for decades, nebusiness asked some of the region’s businesspeople and some of our favourite commentators to share their thoughts on what lies ahead and how to deal with it with courage and traditional North East pragmatism

JAMES RAMSBOTHAM is chief executive of the North East Chamber of Commerce (NECC)

PERHAPS our greatest source of pride and celebration in 2011 will provide even more success in 2012.

As a region we have dominated export in the UK and have seen a record level of international trade throughout the year, exporting over £12 billion in goods.

It is now vitally important that we continue to grow export levels in 2012 in order to return the North East to a stable level of economic growth.

Rest assured that NECC will continue to do everything possible to support international trade across the region.

We will continue to lobby for an improvement to our infrastructure, capital investment allowances, restoration of UKTI budgets, improved roll out of Export Credit Guarantee Department schemes and more support for energy-intensive industries to adjust to carbon floor price to help or exporters to continue to excel.

This will be helped as Lear Corporation expands to create 300-400 jobs in Houghton, SSI recruitment at the former Teesside Cast Products site continues, Hitachi’s Aycliffe plant will begin to take shape and Nissan, which currently employs more people than it ever has during its time on Wearside, begins production of the new LEAF and work gets under way on the new battery mother plant.

As we enter another crucial year, we can look back on the real positives of the last 12 months and aim to create even more success p for the year ahead.