YOUR MONEY
On track to succeed
E-commerce and tourism are the potential saviours of Scotland’s rural economy – so long as broadband connectivity keeps up
W WORDS BILL JAMIESON
‘Tumultuous change in the business universe has the capacity to be a good friend to Scotland’s rural economy’
hat are the prospects for a rural busi- ness renaissance in Scotland? Until recently I would have said ‘very little’.
Rural depopulation has continued, farming remains a struggle and the recent sharp decline in high-street retailing has hit many of our smaller towns hard. All this seems to conform to a long-term
trend. I was born and bred in Ayrshire, to the east of Kilmarnock in the rolling pastures of the Irvine Valley. In the 1950s the valley was certainly a more prosperous place than you find it now. Many shops and small businesses have gone. Light engineering has gone. Coal mining has gone. Lace manufacture has gone. Very little of the heavy traffic that roars along the A71 through the valley towns has cause to stop. It is tempting to see our future as a continuing battle against this baleful attrition. But there are growing grounds for hope that this ebbing tide could be set to turn over the next decade. Today we are seeing a tumultuous change in
the business universe, and it has the capacity to be a very good friend indeed to Scotland’s rural economy in the years ahead. First, there has been an immediate upturn in
Right: The hot summer of 2013 saw tourist businesses report a massive upturn in visitor numbers.
2013 after the near wipe-out of rural tourism last year. The Year of Natural Scotland did not start well. The longest period of cold weather in living memory stretched well into May. That prolonged cold winter had followed the wettest summer for a century. But barely had dire warnings been uttered than we went on to experience one of the warmest summers in years. All across Scotland tourist businesses enjoyed an upturn in visits and forward book- ings. Some destinations reported business up by 40 per cent on the previous year. A broad economic recovery is well underway
and conditions are more conducive to business enterprise and innovation now than for five years. A Bank of Scotland PMI report in the late autumn showed Scotland’s private sector economy continuing its strong performance into the final quarter.
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WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK This recovery is not without its problems or
limitations. But there can be little doubt as to the sharp improvement in business confidence. The CBI’s latest SME Trends Survey showed optimism among small and medium-sized manufacturers rising at the fastest pace since records began in 1988. And optimism around export prospects for the next twelve months has increased strongly. Many businesses, of course, are still strug-
gling. But combine this with growing evidence of economic upturn overall – from labour market data to retail sales, business start-ups to mortgage lending, upbeat manufacturing and construction surveys through to the encoura- ging service-sector figures – and there is little doubt that 2013 turned out markedly better than many had feared. And this upturn matters, because according
to Scottish Natural Heritage, one in seven jobs in Scotland relies on the natural environment, a most undervalued economic asset. Our two national parks alone draw in one million domestic visitors. Taking into account the towns and businesses within the parks, they are reckoned by VisitScotland to contribute £600 million to the Scottish economy. Just as important as all this is the improvement
in outlook for our food and drink industries. Bank of Scotland research in the autumn fore- casted that more than 5,600 extra jobs could be created in Scotland’s food and drink sector by 2018 and that it could ‘significantly exceed’ an industry target of achieving annual turnover of £12.5 billion by 2017. Recent figures on the strength of commercial
planning applications into the parks may come as a surprise. In the Cairngorms National Park the number of business applications has risen more than 36 per cent over the last year and is comfortably twice their 2011 level. The applications range from outdoor sports shops to pedestrian bridge proposals across the Dee. Loch Lomond National Park last year saw a 20 per cent increase in business applications
BIKERIDERLONDONA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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