By Denise Marray
Gulf Times Correspondent London
John Cridland, Director General, Confederation of British Industry (CBI), speaking at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) annual conference on ‘The Investment and Innovation Landscape’, said the UK would have to work hard to retain the attention of international investors in order to realise its infrastructure plans.
“The latest national infrastructure plan identified a pipeline of £466bn of investment required for UK infrastructure. Over 70% of that needs to come from private capital.
The UK market attracts global interest but as we all know international competition for our investment is growing,” he said.
“The CBI’s most recent infrastructure survey reiterated that investors still consider the North American and the Australasian markets as outstripping the UK as attractive location choices. We still have a job of work to do to convince investors outside of the city that the UK is a great place for investment.
There is positive progress here; the amount of private capital available for infrastructure has increased significantly.
With the infrastructure market’s highly illiquid nature and the long term periods required for investors to secure a return, certainty of policy is a key to keep infrastructure investment rising,” he noted.
He commented: “I think the challenge comes back – particularly after an election which gave us more political certainty than we might have anticipated – as to whether that political mandate leads to political certainty on decision making.”
He had a decisive message for the government with regard to the third runway proposed for Heathrow. “I have one message to government: Howard Davies (author of the Davies Commission on airport expansion) has spent three years of his life working out the answer to this puzzle. Just endorse what he said. If you make a decision now we can have diggers on the ground and more runway capacity in the South East of England in 2020. So let’s get on with it.”
He called for decisive leadership across the board on key infrastructure projects.
“It’s not the only area where public policy will need to shift. Investment in road infrastructure will not move forward without more forward thinking on road pricing.
After the successful passing of electricity market reform, political considerations will still erode investor confidence in new power stations unless we have more political certainty.”
Once the political priorities had been established, he cautioned, it was necessary for “politicians to trust people who are not politicians to get on with consistent and persistent delivery.”
He summed up the CBI’s economic priorities over the next five years as: “Unleashing growth in our medium sized businesses, boosting exports and building first rate infrastructure.”
With regard to the EU he said Britain should ideally remain in a reformed EU.
He said that he would like to see the EU focusing on what it does well, such as opening up markets, and be less interfering in other areas. He didn’t like being dictated to over his working hours. “I work 60 hours in my business and thrive on it,” he said. He said the EU should ‘stop beating up the city” and noted that 70% of Europe’s private equity is in London.
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Cridland: Certainty of policy is vital for attracting investments
