Plaid Cymru has outlined plans for a new stand alone development agency tasked with improving the competitiveness of the Welsh economy.
The party said that the agency, known as Prosperity Wales, would have a wide remit including being tasked with driving productivity levels and research and development investment in the economy, while also supporting firms to decarbonise.
It said it would be led by experts drawn from the business world, but also those in tackling inequality and in decarbonisation.
Prosperity Wales' key themes would be:
- A Spatial approach: Focussing attention where it is needed most.
- Rebalancing: addressing historical patterns of discrimination that have led to chronic injustice and inequality;
- Growth: Nurturing local businesses, enabling export and improving productivity; and
- Research and development: Enabling existing businesses to innovate, decarbonise and thrive.
Speaking ahead of the party’s spring conference, Shadow Economy Minister Helen Mary Jones MS said that a Plaid Cymru government would have a clear economic policy to “create and share wealth” and build national prosperity to enable “world-class” public services.
She added :“There is nothing inevitable about the poverty that so many of our fellow citizens face. This poverty is both a direct result of, and a lack of, political decision.
“Prosperity Wales will be an economic development agency with a difference, drawing on expertise from the business world as well specialists in tackling inequality and decarbonisation.
Tasked with developing our economy in such a way that opportunities are created fairly across our nation, there will be an emphasis on addressing historical patterns of discrimination that have led chronic injustice and inequality in the way our economy has functioned.
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"Come the election in May, Labour will have had 21 years in which they have failed to deliver the transformation that Wales so desperately needs. A third of our children are in poverty, our Valleys still bear the scars of the ravages of Thatcherism and our rural communities remain fragile.
"And with a Welsh Tory party happy to hang on to the coat-tails of their Westminster parents, only a Plaid Cymru government will have the vision, ambition and passion to build the fair, green and prosperous nation - an equal nation - that we all want to live in
“We are clear as a party about the purposes of our economic policy. We have to make different decisions, and we have to do it now.”