Internationalising Scottish Business Report

Paul Lewis, Managing Director, Scottish Development International and Scottish Enterprise International Operations, said:

“We welcome the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee Report and are pleased the Committee recognised the significant increase in the support that Scottish Development International provides to help companies export, something which is highly valued by business. This is contributing to the progress the committee notes towards the Scottish Government‘s target to increase exports by 50 per cent by 2017.

As the committee notes, expanding Scotland’s export base to more companies and more sectors is crucial to the growth of our economy and this is at the heart of our business plan and operations.

Given this we are surprised that the Committee don’t feel we are ambitious enough, especially given the significant increase in the number of companies we've been supporting to trade internationally. Internationalising Scottish businesses has been a core focus of our work over a number of years now.

Over the past 3 years we have increased the total number of companies we work with to internationalise from 1381 to 2708, an increase of over 96 per cent and helped increase the scale of international sales projected by companies from £735m to £1.2bn

We will examine the Committee’s full recommendations carefully and will continue our discussions with Scottish Government and other partners on Scotland’s new trade and investment strategy to be launched later this year.”