The 2012 release of the Annual Business Survey of Economic Impact is available here.
The coverage is obviously not as broad as the various equivalent figures provided by the CSO. The Forfás survey is limited to “client” companies with ten employees or more but a benefit of the survey is that the indicators surveyed are decomposed by company ownership.
2 replies on “Forfás: Survey of Economic Impact”
Very interesting snapshot, Seamus. Emphasises again how dependent Ireland is on foreigned owned capital (and business). The data only relates to “supported” firms, so I presume that most IFSC operations, pharma, aircraft leasing /finance operations and the like are not covered….The survey sufferes from the lack of clear boundaries. Makes the exercise a “rah, rah, rah” for Enterprise Ireland, IDA, etc……than anything else though. A mass of data and figures, with little real context. The point though that Ireland is heavily reliant on FDI is clear. The small contribution of Irish firms to GNP is not encouraging. Better than nothing I suppose…..
“In 2012, the Direct Expenditure (payroll and purchases of Irish materials & services) of Irish-owned firms in the Irish economy amounted to 13.4 per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP) of the country, the same percentage as in 2003.
While the overall percentage has remained consistent over the ten year period, the Direct Expenditure of the Irish-owned Manufacturing sectors has reduced from 11.6 per cent to 10.5 per cent and the Services sectors have increased their share from 1.8 per cent to 2.9 per cent.
Direct Expenditure by foreign–owned firms as a percentage of GNP stands at 17.3 per cent in 2012 down from 19.1 per cent in 2003. As with Irish-owned companies over this period the amount contributed by the manufacturing sectors decreased while there has been an increase in the contribution of the services sectors.”
@ Paul W
Forfás is now a unit of the enterprise department. So as with the economists in the finance dept, the rule would be: don’t produce anything that would embarrass the minister.
The whole enterprise policy needs retooling using some real world tests.
The OECD’s Economic Survey of Ireland 2013 recommended empirically-proven policies and sunset clauses in enterprise and innovation supports. It said the number of programmes and agencies multiplied during the period of booming growth. “There are now over 170 separate budget lines, sometimes for very small amounts of money, and 11 major funding agencies involved in disbursing the Science Budget, although it is small by international standards.”
Can we handle the truth?
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