Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:38 pm on 13 February 2019.
Absolutely. I think a regional economic focus is essential, and the economic action plan puts this front and centre of our approach from now on. We are currently aligning the teams within the Welsh Government to make sure that the expertise and the capacity is there to take this forward. And it is also important to be engaged with local authorities in a spirit of mutual respect, working together, to take their view on how their regions should grow, and we work alongside with them, rather than imposing on them what we think the best interests of a region are. The foundational economy approach is also really important to this—the growth of SMEs and grounded firms—and how we can use the near public sector, the scattered array of small companies that depend on the public sector for much of their work, and how we can use procurement to make sure more value is captured locally and doesn't leak out. And we'll be making some announcements over the coming weeks about starting work in this area, and I'd be very keen to work with the Member to develop those thoughts, building on the joint announcement we made in the budget of our £1.5 million fund to develop the foundational economy with Plaid Cymru.