Forbes hails ‘impressive results’ from Scottish Enterprise

Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes has hailed “impressive results” from Scottish Enterprise, after the agency helped create and safeguard almost 17,000 jobs last year.

Results for 2023-24 show the economic development agency secured more than 16,700 new and safeguarded jobs for the country.

This included more than 9,000 jobs linked to inward investment in Scotland – the highest total for this for the last five years.

In addition, Scottish Enterprise support for businesses helped deliver £1.9 billion of capital investment in Scotland, along with £2.15 billion in planned exports, and more than £449 million in business innovation investment.

Scottish Enterprise chief executive Adrian Gillespie hailed the “outstanding results” as he and Ms Forbes visited Symbiosis in Stirling, where the company is developing a drug manufacturing site thanks to help from a £4.3 million Scottish Enterprise grant.

Ms Forbes, who is also the Economy Secretary, said it is an example of how Scottish Enterprise is targeting key areas – such as the life sciences sector – to “bring significant capital investment and improve manufacturing, boosting exports”.

She added: “These impressive results show how the agency is building on its strong record of success by unlocking thousands of new jobs and global growth opportunities to achieve a more successful, greener and fairer economy.”

Mr Gillespie said the agency is “helping businesses right across Scotland drive up levels of innovation, international activity and investment to build a fairer, greener and stronger Scottish economy”.

He added: “Such a successful year requires considerable effort and huge aspiration from the companies we work with, our partners, and our own teams at home and overseas.

“I’m pleased that last year’s performance has also helped lay the foundations for the introduction of our new missions-based approach this year, with almost 60% of new inward investment jobs last year coming from the energy transition sector.”

He added that Symbiosis is a “brilliant example of our long-term support in action”, saying Scottish Enterprise had helped “unlock the company’s international growth potential and support its innovation and investment to maximise global economic opportunities”.

Mr Gillespie said: “We want to work with many more companies that share Symbiosis’s ambition to secure billions of pounds of investment for our economy and create thousands of new jobs over the next decade.”