Investment portal will give clear vision of opportunities, Swinney tells summit

An upcoming portal called “Investment Scotland” will give investors a clear vision of the pipleline of opportunities available in Scotland, John Swinney has said.

The First Minister spoke at the Scotland’s Global Investment Summit in Edinburgh on Tuesday, saying the new portal would marshall together all of the projects available to investors.

The event, organised by Scottish Financial Enterprise (SFE) and the City of London Corporation, brought together international investors, business leaders and politians to discuss Scotland’s economic future.

Mr Swinney said his government wanted to make it easier for investors to see which opportunities lie ahead.

Launching the portal was one of his commitments in the Programme for Government released earlier this year.

He said: “We will launch Investment Scotland, a single business-facing gateway showcasing high-value investment prospects with clear risk/return profiles and a visibility of the pipeline.

“One of the important lessons that we have learned is the necessity of ensuring that we marshall investable propositions that arise out of the dialogue of our different organisations – alinging with the government’s priorities, but crucially, able to attract private sector investment.”

Mr Swinney told the audience of global investors his government would engage with them and be “pragmatic” about any challenges.

The scale of the opportunity around offshore wind is “difficult to overstate”, he said, with potential for 40 gigawatts worth of developments around Scotland.