Radically improved employment prospects in the North-East lie mainly in our own hands.

National public policy measures will have a major role to play, of course, but our future prosperity and the enhanced jobs outlook that goes with it will also depend very much on our own efforts.

There will be two main determinants of how successful we shall be. First, the extent to which we can innovate profitably and second, how good we are at creating a highly-skilled workforce that is responsive to the changing needs of world markets.

As a region, we shall have to raise our sights more than most. This is due to our peripheral position and because over the years we have become more dependent than many other regions on inward investment to sustain our growth and create jobs.

Public policy can do much to reduce this imbalance through the implementation of imaginative ways of improving land, sea and air communications with the rest of the UK and beyond. Progress here is proceeding at a snail's pace and to date, policy does not add up to much of a strategy.

We have become more vulnerable to global shifts, particularly in price-competitive areas.

As the Eastern European economies and those of the Far East and China emerge as favourite locations for mobile international investment, so it has become painfully obvious that we have to respond by moving up-market in terms of value-added.

Government can help by adopting policies that make sure that we remain a low-cost, flexible economy - one in which companies continue to want to do business (although policy is currently travelling in the opposite direction)." Steve Rankin, regional director of CBI North-East.