UK Edition
Government appoints KPMG to draw up China trade plan for the Midlands
The Department for International Trade has appointed KPMG to draw up a three-year strategy to encourage businesses from the Midlands to export products to China ahead of a trade mission later this year.
Representatives from the Government’s Midlands Engine group, which aims to increase productivity in the region, led a meeting with councils and business leaders on Thursday in a bid to persuade firms to join the mission in November.
KPMG has been hired to draw up details of how Midlands-based companies can take advantage of the opportunities to trade with China, in order to shore up trade relationships ahead of the UK’s departure from the European Union.
The report will be presented by Sir John Peace, chairman of the Midlands Engine group, at the China International Industry Fair in Shanghai at the end of October. A number of businesses with roots in the Midlands, including Norton Motorcycles and pottery company Denby, are understood to be working on plans to increase their presence in the Chinese market.
The region is associated with traditional engineering and manufacturing industries, but is also home to a burgeoning technology sector. The Midlands economy is worth an estimated £200bn, making it larger than the economies of New Zealand, Vietnam and Finland, and it is home to more than 780,000 businesses.
At the moment, it accounts for around 23pc of all English goods exports, according to official figures.
The forthcoming trade trip follows a similar visit last year in which some of the Midlands’ major conurbations were paired with Chinese cities in an attempt to encourage stronger trade relationships. According to the Government, the Midlands is the only part of the UK where trade with China more than doubled between 2010 and 2015, increasing by £2.4bn, or 118.4pc, compared to the national increase of 57.7pc.
John Forkin, managing director of Marketing Derby, an organisation that aims to promote the city, said he hoped the KPMG strategy would be more than “facts and figures about the amazing opportunities”.
“We want defined actions to help us develop trade links,” he said. “We’re lagging behind many other places on this front. Germany’s trade with China is eight times greater than the UK’s trade with China.”
He said the focus from the Government needed to be on helping small and medium-sized businesses to access partners in China, rather than concentrating on large firms that can already access international markets.