Foreign firms interested in opening Northern Ireland offices just 30% of pre-Covid peak: DUP man blames Protocol and sea border for collapse
The number of foreign firms visiting Northern Ireland with an eye to opening offices here has fallen to less than one-third of the level seen before Covid hit.
Local officials currently try to sell the province as a unique opportunity for companies based abroad, pushing it as somewhere that can act as a bridge between markets in the EU and mainland Britain due to its political position in the wake of Brexit, the NI Protocol and the Windsor Framework.
But a DUP MLA now argues the sea border is actually harming Northern Ireland’s chances, as there has been a huge drop-off in foreign firms visiting to invest.
The big change came when the pandemic hit, with 2020 understandably only showing a handful of visits as the world went into lockdown.
But foreign investment visits haven’t come close to getting back to the level they were at pre-Covid.
During the three years leading up to the pandemic, companies based abroad made a total of 784 visits to Northern Ireland while eyeing the possibility of opening up branches in the province.
Over the three years since the pandemic, there have been just 250 visits – a 68% fall.
In fact, there were more visits in each of 2017 and 2018 alone than in all of the last three years combined.
The pre-Covid peak came in 2018, with 319 visits; last year, there were 91.
That has DUP MLA Peter Martin arguing that the tactic of selling Northern Ireland as uniquely benefitting from the Protocol has been a busted flush, and the sea border is instead putting foreign investment off.
“Despite some of the claims made about Brexit, it is clear to see that Northern Ireland was an attractive destination for foreign direct investment in the years following 2016,” he said.
“The pandemic had an obvious impact on investment visits, but they haven’t recovered since; notably, the NI Protocol came into force in January 2021 and clearly did not deliver the benefits that its cheerleaders claimed.”
Mr Martin added that the issue is particularly notable in his own North Down constituency, which received zero visits from companies based abroad over the past two years.
The main location for investment visits in recent years has been South Belfast, which got almost half of the province’s interest from foreign firms.