Suzanne Wylie’s round-up of what’s been happening at NI Chamber recently.
Since the Chancellor delivered her Autumn budget statement in late October, NI Chamber has been intensely focused on the implications for our member businesses.
We responded immediately, citing significant concerns about the impact of the increased business tax burden and the consequences of inheritance tax (IHT) changes for family firms, including farmers.
Autumn budget: Implications for our members
Thank you to every member who responded to our request for feedback and provided such detailed information on the implications for their own organisations. We hope everyone who attended our webinar with Grant Thornton, which focused specifically on the implications for family businesses, found the timely update useful. We have written to the First and deputy First Ministers to request a meeting to discuss the implications of the Autumn Budget and press the need to mitigate the impacts – your collective feedback will form a central part of that important discussion.
Member contributions have also been central to NI Chamber’s response to the draft Programme for Government (PfG), within which we outlined how the PfG should be used to build confidence and deliver sustainable economic growth.
Our response included particular reference to:
- Greater ambition in the form of a long-term, Executive wide Economic Plan
- Embedding partnership with the business community in the early stages of policy development
- The addition of a strategic priority focused on ‘Enabling Infrastructure for a Sustainable Future’, with an urgent focus on wastewater
- An Independent Review of Public Spending and
- An AI strategy to underpin public sector transformation
You can find out more about our response in this short video synopsis.
At the end of October, we also hosted our inaugural Competitiveness Committee, chaired by Ashleen Feeney from KPMG and in November, our recently established Workforce Committee met to consider what a Workforce Development Agency for NI might look like.
Pictured: Suzanne Wylie, NI Chamber's CEO, at the President's Banquet 2024.
NI Chamber and wider Northern Ireland events
Alongside our own events, including Meet the Buyer (supported by Bank of Ireland), a round table dinner on sustainable development (supported by AIB), a Future Workforce Forum (supported by NIE Networks) and a Business Breakfast focused on innovation (supported by Danske Bank), the team and I have also been contributing to the discussion at lots of external events too.
Following the budget, I was pleased to contribute to an Insider Media roundtable on economic growth supported by Cleaver Fulton Rankin and Cavanagh Kelly. During the very successful Global Innovation Summit at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), in conjunction with the Global Federation of Competitiveness Councils, our President, Cat McCusker was part of a panel on making the innovation economy more inclusive, while I joined an interesting discussion on the impact of innovation-led regeneration.
I was also delighted to be invited back to QUB, this time alongside Metro Mayor Andy Burnham for a lunch focused on game-changing innovation projects to transform our business capabilities, funded through City and Growth Deals.
N Chamber’s Director of Public Affairs, Stuart Anderson, also joined Special Evoy Joe Kennedy on-stage at a Translink event, hosted as part of Linen Quarter BID's React Festival, highlighting the role of public transport in building smart cities and achieving a modal shift across Northern Ireland.
Pictured: Stuart Anderson, NI Chamber's Director of Public Affairs.
Hosting North Carolina Chamber of Commerce
In mid-November, it was our pleasure to host a delegation from North Carolina Chamber of Commerce (NC Chamber) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. As members will know, we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NC Chamber to increase investment, research and business alliances.
Pictured: North Carolina Chamber of Commerce's President & CEO Gary Salamido and Vice President of Government Affairs, Jake Cashion.
Whilst here, our visitors were hugely impressed by what they saw during site visits to member companies including B-Secure, Artemis, Catagen, Salter-Grange, Ionic Technologies and colleagues in our universities, as well as local politicians. They are already working to open doors to these businesses in the US market, so watch this space for more updates to follow.
Undoubtedly, one of the highlights of recent weeks was our 2024 President’s Banquet. With more than 1,000 people in attendance, it was our biggest ever. On the night, we challenged each other to raise our ambition for Northern Ireland and think imaginatively about how we can work collectively to realise game-changing opportunities.
Closing thoughts
To make those opportunities an economic reality, we need the support of policymakers to help restore levels of business confidence in all sectors across Northern Ireland. That will require both a long-term economic plan and a renewed partnership between business and the Executive focused on overcoming barriers to business growth and delivering on the aspiration of a globally competitive and sustainable economy in Northern Ireland.
