Delayed take-off for trade

Another British Airways strike, and a successful legal challenge to Heathrow's third airport: reminders of Scotland's vulnerability when it comes to international connections.

While opinion is deeply divided around London's main airport, further away from the metropolis, there's not much doubt from businesspeople that more capacity is needed.

As The Independent's respected travel editor argues, BA's strike flight schedule shows that when there's a constraint on capacity, the axe is taken most swiftly to Scottish routes.

That's why the planned third runway at Heathrow and a return to government support for developing direct air links are a feature of the early responses to a Holyrood inquiry into Scotland's international trading links.

The Scottish Chambers of Commerce are most vociferous in their urging for improved links, along with a "desperate need" for improvements to port, rail and road infrastructure.

According to the forum: "It's reached the point where Scotland needs to invest heavily in improving its economic competitiveness. At present, we are operating well below our potential".

Just one of the ideas to boost exports is a tax break for research into foreign markets.

Extremely cluttered

Among the submissions, there's plenty praise for the role of Scottish Development International, jointly run by the Scottish government and Scottish Enterprise.

Some, however, complain about the complexity of organisations in Scotland and at UK level, which is seen as hard-going for exporters and harder-going for inward investors.

"Extremely cluttered" is how Scottish Engineering describes it. Oil and Gas UK says it would make more sense to put Scotland's trade efforts together with the rest of the UK's (which doesn't seem all that likely while the SNP is running the government at Holyrood).

From the Scotch Whisky Association, reinforced word-for-word by its largest member, Diageo: "A more co-ordinated, long term export strategy at national level would be beneficial. It is unclear, for example, how Scotch whisky fits into the Scottish government's international strategy".

An unexpected contribution comes from Mongolia. It's not noted as a major trading partner. And consular attache Kenneth Stewart reckons it will stay that way if his attempts to get support for a trade mission get nowhere:

"From the Mongolian perspective, we sit on one of the largest untapped mineral resources in the world and as the Mongolian Scottish consulate, we have been directly approached by regions within Mongolia to introduce Scots companies to help them develop these assets.

"One would have thought that this was meat and drink for Scottish Enterprise to help us pursue and support. Unfortunately so far, either due to lack of commercial nous, global knowledge, foresight or manpower resources within the Scottish Executive, we have been met with inertia".

Bollywood bonanza

It seems those manpower resources have had their Asian attentions focussed instead on India.

Today, we got a strategy for engagement with it, recognising that, well, it's very big and increasingly important, and it's time we did more about it.

So Scottish government policy now wants to create the conditions for talented Indians to live in Scotland, as 3,000 graduates chose to do between 2005 and 2008, using more flexible visa rules. And vice versa, for Scots going east.

There's much talk of links in education, research and culture, building on Scotland's past success at attracting Bollywood film makers. There's a hope held out of improving air links.

And there's a lot about encouraging tourism from India to Scotland, which is reckoned to have generated £25m in 2006.

It's all part of the big picture approach to boosting exports.

Given slack consumer demand, low investment, and a looming crunch in government spending, exports look like the only way to grow the economy. And they are proving slow to respond to the opportunity presented by weakened sterling.

There's a catch with that strategy, however. Britain is far from being the only country wanting to grow out of recession by boosting its exports.

A rough totting up of all those countries hoping to do precisely the same amounts to 80% of the world economy. To succeed at exporting, you need someone else to import. So who's going to do that?