SCOTLAND is continually beating the UK on foreign direct investment, but experts are urging the country to diversify investment origin – and to spread a vision of the nation beyond kilts and castles, as Scotland misses out amid the UK’s “Global Britain” strategy.
The US – investing heavily in services and research – has been the largest contributor to Scottish FDI responsible for a third of all projects, with the remaining four of Scotland’s top five investing countries within the EU.Government statistics show foreign investor-supported firms constitute just 3% of Scotland’s businesses but are responsible for more than a third of Scottish jobs and 77% of exports.
Recent tourism numbers follow the same dynamics as FDI. Though US tourism and European tourism to Scotland have grown from their pre-Covid levels, tourism from the rest of the world has halved between 2019 and 2022. Greenwood acknowledges that “driving investment to rural areas is more challenging” but has praised the Scottish Government’s Regional Tourism Investment Fund and partnerships to electrify the A9 in promoting tourist visibility to regions outside of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Experts agree that this push for secondary regional investment and successful renewal of existing investment goes far in explaining the high concentration of American and EU investments as once under way investment relationships become increasingly self-strengthening.