The National Assembly for Wales Enterprise and Business Committee believes that the Welsh Government should do more to develop and publish transparent Key Performance Indicators showing the annual inward investment performance of the Welsh economy.
This is one of the key findings of the recent inquiry that the Welsh Government Minister for Economy, Science and Transport has rejected.
The Committee felt that figures published by UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) do not allow the performance of the Welsh Government to be scrutinised and feels that new indicators should include the total number of new projects, joint ventures, acquisitions, expansions and retentions; and, for each of these project types, the number of jobs created, the number of jobs safeguarded and the total value of capital investment or expenditure involved.
As part of this the Welsh Government should publish an equivalent set of figures for projects in which it was directly involved, also showing the level of Welsh Government financial resource involved in securing the projects and attracting headquarters and Research and Development facilities to Wales.
Professor Max Munday of Cardiff Business School who reported to the Committee said:
"The sort of figures that we use for analysts to monitor foreign manufacturing and foreign direct investment are almost completely useless.
"For example, there was a headline where it was quoted that Wales has had a 191% increase in inward investment. Well, no, it has not. That assumption was based on a number of projects, or something like that, or a number of jobs; that is not the same as capital investment."
The Committee is however is pleased to note the Welsh Government is already actively considering improvements in the economic statistics available in Wales and are taking steps to improve the quality and timeliness of the economic statistics.
One of the recommendations of the Committee in particular was the Welsh Government should work with or commission the Office for National Statistics to produce Gross Domestic Product figures for Wales, on the same basis and frequency as it does for the UK.
The Welsh Government should also commission the Office for National Statistics to produce improved export statistics for Wales that reflect the contribution Welsh businesses make to UK exports in the form of intermediate outputs.