Projects that were reliant on foreign direct investments were badly hit in the regions last year, stoking further concerns about the UK’s ability to rebalance its economy.<\/p>\n
The latest data from EY’s annual UK attractiveness survey has highlighted the significant drop in international investment seen in the regions.<\/p>\n
Manchester retained its position at the top of the regional cities’ rankings, despite seeing a drop in projects from 45 to 37, and remains well ahead of Birmingham, which attracted 22.<\/p>\n
The number of FDI projects in the UK outside London fell by 20% in 2018 – higher than in any year during the last recession – as 150 fewer investments were secured than a year earlier.<\/p>\n
But Greater London had an almost identical year, with its 458 projects just one below 2017’s total.<\/p>\n
Mark Gregory, EY\u2019s chief UK economist added: \u201cThe relatively strong performance of London and the South East suggests that attempts to rebalance the UK geographically may be harder to realise given the challenges posed by Brexit.”<\/p>\n
EY’s data also highlights the growing two-tier nature of the regional economies, with the larger cities typically performing more resiliently than the rest of the region.<\/p>\n
For example, Birmingham had 22 FDI projects in 2018, which was one project and 5% higher than a year before. But the West Midlands without Birmingham was down 20%.<\/p>\n
In the North West both Manchester and the region as a whole saw a significant fall in the number of FDI projects. Manchester was down 18%, although the North West excluding Manchester fell by 28%.<\/p>\n
Across the Pennines, Yorkshire fared much worse – although Leeds was up 11%, the rest of Yorkshire plunged 56%.<\/p>\n
Bob Ward, managing partner for EY in the North West said: \u201cWhile it\u2019s great news that Manchester\u2019s inward investment figures are ahead of all other cities outside London, the fact that it was home to more than half of all investments in the region, and was the only North West location to pass double digits is a cause for some concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis shift of investment to larger cities is a UK-wide trend as foreign investors look to place \u2018safe bets\u2019 amid a general climate of political and economic uncertainty. But investment is still coming into the regions and I\u2019d like to see steps taken to help ensure more of an equitable distribution of investment throughout the North West.\u201d<\/p>\n
But overall the attractiveness of the UK is in decline among investors, according to a survey by EY. <\/p>\n
It found that while 42% of investors expect the UK\u2019s attractiveness for FDI to decline over the coming three years, only 26% of them expect it to improve – the worst-ever result in the decade that the annual survey has been running.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Drop in number of projects worse than any year during the recession<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":2002619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-2042795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-featured-story","tag-top-story"],"yoast_head":"\n