Member Article

UK should manufacture its way out of recession

The UK must manufacture its way out of the recession, according to North East entrepreneur John Elliott MBE.

Mr Elliott, the founder of the Ebac Group is currently campaigning to highlight the dangers of failing to address the UK trade deficit. arguing that by taking people off benefits and into employment in the manufacturing industry can help boost the UK’s economic health.

The latest UK trade figures for non-EU countries, announced this morning, showed £11.1 billion in exports in April, a £2.4 billion (17.5%) decrease in exports from March, with imports dropping by £0.5 billion (2.8%) to £16.5 billion.

John said: “These figures once more highlight the biggest problem our economy faces, and that is that we simply consume more than we produce.

“Those countries which are doing well economically, such as China, Brazil and Poland,have something in common and it’s not a coincidence. They all have trade surpluses based on manufacturing on an industrial scale. If we go back in time to when the UK was thriving, we had a strong manufacturing base. We should invest in manufacturing the basic things that we and the rest of world buy.

He now believes that global trade is seriously out of balance and must be restored.

John continued: “Unfortunately, deficits are being covered by debt which cannot be repaid and yet countries such as the UK worry about interest rates on debt rather than reducing the debt, which is a much better long term policy and easy to achieve.

“We are drawn to buying cheap goods even though we could easily do them ourselves using the unemployed who we’re paying to do nothing.”

In 2004, John led the successful campaign against a Regional Assembly in the North East and he was a regional chairman of Business for Sterling the pro-pound business organisation.

John is also campaigning for greater focus the trade deficit which he believes is under-acknowledged as an indicator of the health of the economy, and the ability of manufacturing to make a positive contribution to the necessary rebalancing.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .