North East sailing on its exports

Jan 22 2010 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

THE North East is uniquely well-placed to take advantage of a new economic dawn which will see future UK wealth generated from exports, a leading economist believes.

The finance-led boom of the last decade, which was based on the businesses and consumers loading up on cheap debt, will be replaced by one in which the UK focuses on making goods and services to sell abroad.

Peter Spencer, senior economist at York University, and chief economic adviser to the Ernst & Young ITEM Club was in the region yesterday addressing senior business figures at an event organised by Ernst & Young and the Entrepreneurs Forum.

He said: “We need to restructure and rebalance our economy. It’s very clear that in recent years the economy became totally unbalanced and became totally reliant on consumer and business spending with debt.

“The new economic model will have to look very different. It will involve a lot less borrowing, which will in turn lead to a lower pound.

“The future economy has to be geared towards exports, the lower pound will help and the North East is uniquely well-placed for that.

“It is the only part of the UK which runs a balance of payments export surplus and the North East has a strong tradition of engineering innovation. This leaves the region in a good position to drive this new economic model forward.”