ADAM PRICE, Plaid Cymru’s Finance Spokesperson, has called for a new long-term plan to turn around the economic fortunes of Wales.
Speaking on BBC TV’s Sunday Politics programme today, Adam Price said: “We don’t have a coherent economic strategy in Wales. What we have is a ministerial chequebook and even that is not used with any logical consistency. We have an £80m deal for a conference centre in Newport. Fine, but only £30m only put on the table to save our biggest company, our biggest industry.
“Where we are putting in money on the table let us take an equity stake so the taxpayer gets a return and we are a proper partner to business. We seem to be using the same strategy of the 1970s and 1980s where it’s just governments giving out grant aid rather than working alongside companies, management and workforce together, to come up with a sustainable long-term strategy for those individual companies and the Welsh economy as a whole,” said Adam Price, who stressed the Party of Wales’s plan for a Welsh Development Agency for the 21st century.
On Tata, Adam Price, Plaid Cymru’s Assembly candidate for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, added: “We have critical of both governments (UK and Welsh Government) of them being sluggish and being a little complacent but we need all to work together.
“I would like to see the Welsh Government playing a more pro-active roll. It is good that they have sat down with Liberty Steel but they should be talking to other buyers and particularly the local management in Port Talbot that drew up the McKinsey Plan that they believe shows a credible plan to profitability. Let’s get behind the local management and unions and provide with them with all the assistance they need in turning it into a viable business plan and also possibly taking a stake as part of a long-term sustainable plan for the steel industry in Wales.”
Adam Price stressed Plaid Cymru’s opposition to a £1bn being spent on an M4 relief road around Newport. He warned that there was a: ‘real danger of Wales becoming a microcosm of the core problem of the UK economy which is an overheated corner in the south-east, relatively prosperous and the rest of Wales unfortunately sees itself declining.
“If we are going to solve our economic problems as a nation then we need balanced development. We can point to transport bottlenecks in all parts of Wales – look at the M55 and the M4 further west.
“Our strategic road network in Wales is crying out for investment and just concentrating on 16 miles of a new three-lane motorway is not going to prise us out of the economic rut we are as a nation, not just one part of Wales.
“There seems to be only one priority at the moment which is the needs of the most prosperous part of Wales. I want to see south-east Wales doing well, I love to see my capital city doing well but we need to spread prosperity westwards and north.”
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