Plaid Cymru Manifesto for Business

Apr 122011

Business4Wales wholly endorses this excellent manifesto pledge by Plaid Cymru. At last, someone is listening and understands the needs of small business! A miracle indeed.
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Helping our small businesses succeed

We will continue to value our small businesses and their vital contribution to our economy in all parts of Wales.
There is clear evidence that our small businesses face a struggle in accessing growth capital with the vast majority of businesses in Wales unable to tap into the UK Business Growth Fund because the turnover threshold is too high. We will therefore establish, in partnership with the private sector, a Welsh Growth Fund so that small and medium enterprises can have greater access to finance.
Businesses also need smaller, more easily-accessible loans. Plaid will investigate the use of community finance models in providing a more flexible, local solution to this problem.

We will examine the possibility of using the credit union structure as a mechanism for paying public sector workers, providing money for the
credit unions in order to lend to small and medium enterprises.

Ambition is Critical

We will maintain the existing level of business-rate relief for businesses in Wales. We will review the current system to develop a business rates model which exempts crime-prevention measures and environmentally beneficial changes taken by small businesses from rateable value calculation, and we will introduce seasonality for businesses which rely on tourism.
We will create a Welsh Valuation Office Agency. Rateable value assessments must be undertaken fairly to provide a level playing field for small businesses, rather than favouring the larger out-of -town developments as they do at present.
We will undertake a detailed Retail Strategy for Wales. The retail sector is crucial to vibrant local economies and town centres, and contributes to the health of other businesses as well as providing services to local communities. We will design a national plan to improve town centres for local people and visitors, using empty shops as commercial offices, promoting local produce and creating more living space in town centres. We will ring-fence the Post Office Diversification Fund and we will continue to ensure the protection of local Post Offices and shops. We will oppose the privatisation of the Royal Mail.

We will ensure that Wales becomes a pioneer of ‘green’ technologies. We want to encourage and support the innovation and development of the products and services that a low-carbon economy demands. We will support Welsh business so it can exploit the opportunities offered by our natural resources and take a leading role in developing low-carbon and sustainable energy technologies.

Plaid will seek to radically reform public sector procurement in Wales so that it addresses the challenges facing small businesses and provides greater opportunities for Welsh businesses. Currently, around 50% of goods and services purchased by the Welsh public sector are procured from Welsh-based suppliers. We want to increase that figure to 75% over the next Assembly term. We will introduce procurement models that are accessible to smaller businesses, and provide social and environmental clauses to promote the sustainable development of our economy.
We will apply social clauses where appropriate to ensure smaller businesses are paid promptly, which helps to support local employment and training opportunities. Through mapping the supply chain we will address the impact on small businesses of ‘clumping’ procurement contracts. We will measure the impact on small businesses of procurement within the Welsh public sector.
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Da iawn

Business Finance:Credit Unions and Payroll capitalisation

Features, special 1 Response »

Aug 232010

SPECIAL FEATURE

This article is about financial infrastructure solutions for the Welsh Economy and Welsh Business. Originally published (in edited form) in agenda the magazine for the Institute of Welsh Affairs ( summer 2010 No.41).

Adolf Hitler rose to power during the Great Depression of the 1930s because of fear and loathing of bankers coupled with racism and economic collapse. We all remember nightmare images of people paying for bara brith with a wheelbarrow load of paper Reichsmarks. It is a vision embedded in the collective unconscious of Europeans such as ourselves, or, to use modern parlance, it’s in our DNA.

Karl Marx clearly recognised how Capitalism is built on the flow of money and this, in turn, puts the ‘levers of power’ in the hands of people who understand this or are in positions to control it: i.e. the banking systems. Communism and its many re-interpretations by the likes of Lenin was built on this understanding.

Two main factors helped the USA emerge from the Great Depression, where a hatred of the depredations wreaked by banks, especially in rural farming communities, was more than equal to that of Europe. These were US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal infrastructure programmes and the huge re-employment provided by an emerging military-industrial complex at the outset of WWII. To a certain extent the New Deal programme saved America from a descent into demagoguery and the equivalent of German National Socialism. For those interested in the history of the implementation of New Deal structures and their political and socio-economic ramifications, Robert.A.Caro’s immense Pulitzer Prize winning biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon. B. Johnson are a ‘must read’. There are lessons here that those in power both in the UK and in Wales, need to learn.

It is clear therefore, that an awareness of the political zeitgeist, history and what has worked before and is working now, is intrinsic to any sustainable regeneration of the Welsh economy. Our current governing class appears to show lamentable ignorance in these matters, is far too parochial in outlook or vision and seems also to be hell-bent on ‘re-inventing the wheel’. But the wheel has already been invented; what is needed now is fuel for the engine and suitable lubrication – which brings us back to … money.

How money is used, and how it flows is the only key to any solution that can unlock our economy and thus enable the realisation of any kind of social or public service agenda to which we may wish to aspire to as a Society.