Invest NI To Help Firms Weather Financial Storm

A 'lifeline' has been thrown to local NI companies facing a virtual financial storm.

The NI Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster announced today that a £5 million boost to help Invest Northern Ireland's clients weather the economic slowdown was being introduced.

The announcement was made at Invest NI's 'Challenges and Opportunities - the Credit Crunch' event in Belfast, where specialist business advisors provided local firms with expert help and advice on how to guide their way through challenging times and maximise opportunities.

Announcing the support, the Minister said: "Today's announcement is an example of Invest NI proactively bringing forward new initiatives which will enable its clients to maintain a strategic focus in the face of current tougher conditions.

"Through the funding announced today, Invest NI clients, most of whom are locally-owned small and medium sized enterprises, will be able to obtain fast-track support to identify and implement specific actions to weather the current economic conditions.

"Clients will be able to receive up to five days free on-site support to identify specific projects up to the value of £100,000 each in areas such as financial and cash flow management, improving supply chain and internal efficiencies, or removing barriers to securing sales in new markets.

"Invest NI funding will contribute 50% of the cost of approved projects, which in many cases is a higher percentage contribution than is normally available," she said, noting that the challenge for NI business is to place an even greater focus on continuous improvement.

"We need to be exploiting every opportunity to increase the value added to products and services by introducing more innovative processes, and improving profitability and competitiveness in markets outside Northern Ireland," she said.

Those attending received individually tailored, one-to-one advice, on schemes to develop more efficient operations, reduce costs in their supply chains and increase their profitability and competitiveness in export markets.

The event builds on programmes such as Innovation Vouchers, Introduction to Exporting and the Growth Accelerator Programme, through which Invest NI is providing easy to access, flexible, support to accelerate the growth of our locally-owned business base.

Invest NI has also recently appointed a number of Business Development Executives whose role is to seek out new clients from within Northern Ireland that meet the Invest NI client definition.

A second event will be held on 30 September in Cookstown, where the keynote speaker will be Howard Hackney, a Partner at Grant Thornton UK.

(BMcC)