The country has now spoken and voted for change.
We have written to the new Prime Minister in the hope that his government can provide the much needed economic stability that will create the conditions for business to thrive in every part of the UK; but selfishly our focus is very much on supporting our members and the wider North-east community.
And this QES quarter two report shows a very mixed report card in terms of business performance,challenges and opportunities in this part of the world.
We need the PM to deliver on his commitment to forge a new partnership with business to boost growth and to work with his government to ensure that Aberdeen & Grampian is in pole position to deliver an energy transition that secures investment, jobs and creates the opportunities everyone covets in the clean industries of the future.
However, very real concerns - shared by industry, investors, academia and the Trade Unions - persist around energy policy.
That policy must be one that actually avoids a cliff- edge rather than just saying it, while we scale up opportunities, projects and jobs in renewables. We need policies that prevent a premature shutdown of the North Sea. Ones that don’t ‘offshore’ more oil and gas production with a significantly higher global carbon footprint while we still require fossil fuels as part of our energy mix. And that ensure we do not suffer wholesale flight of investment and people to overseas markets.
While the fate of the energy sector is critical to the future prosperity of our region, it is not by any means the only area to which we look to the UK government for support.
It is vital that Aberdeen & Grampian continues to position itself for future success by making continued progress with our sector diversification strategy. Many exciting developments have already been seen with many more in the pipeline.
In life sciences, food and drink production, agriculture and fisheries, tourism and hospitality, digital technology and a thriving service sector supporting our ambitious businesses.
North East Scotland is among the most productive and enterprising regions anywhere in the UK with top quartile export performance and we want to harness these underpinning advantages to become one of the most globally attractive prospect regions for inward investment.
We need a business environment that encourages enterprise, start-ups, scale-ups and sustainable multi- sector growth. The pressures of business taxes and spiralling costs has stretched many firms to breaking point over recent years and we are hopeful of an improved partnership between our UK, Scottish and local governments in seeking to address this - and a range of other matters - in a meaningful way.
And as Europe’s energy capital we must ensure our region remains readily connected by air, road, rail, sea and digitally, with capital investment made to bring a pipeline of projects and opportunities to fruition.
Uppermost among these is the reinstatement of the railway north of Aberdeen to Peterhead andFraserburgh: the two largest population centres in the UK furthest from the rail network.
You can view AGCC’s full manifesto for business success ‘Energising the Nation’s economy’ here.