This year our Annual Luncheon, kindly sponsored by ESB Independent Energy, will be held on Friday 8 October 2010 in Belfast City Hall, starting at 12.00 noon.
We are delighted to announce CBI president, Helen Alexander CBE, will be our guest speaker.
There are very few places left for this extremely popular event. For further information and to book please contact Sarah Smart.
CBI NI members met with Des Armstrong, chief executive, Central Procurement Board, earlier this week. Issues covered included the recommendations from Assembly Finance Committee’s Inquiry (with strong push for more social clauses), progress with standardisation of generic material and improved consistency across the public sector, and significant concerns about unlimited liability clauses on many contracts which were not relevant and were resulting in suppliers not tendering – the latter issue is to be discussed by the Procurement Board in November. At the meeting Des give a presentation providing us with a Public Procurement update which included an overview of E-Sourcing.
You can view his presentation here.
The outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review, (due on 20 October), and how the Northern Ireland Executive responds to the reduction in public expenditure are critical issues for the future of the Northern Ireland economy. Public expenditure in 2010/11 is £10.2bn on the revenue side and around £1.4bn on the capital side, though there are indications that capex might come in somewhat below that. By the fourth year of the CSR, ie 2014/15 revenue expenditure is expected to fall to less than £9.0bn and capex to significantly less than £1bn – unless the Executive agrees to raise some additional funding or re-engineer parts of the public sector.
The CBI Northern Ireland report which we are currently in the final stages of preparing will address these issues, and set out a strategy to address the funding challenges to ensure that core public services are maintained and the economic recovery is supported. A final meeting of our Public Sector Steering Group takes place on 31 August. We expect to launch our report in mid-September which will be followed up by an extensive series of meetings with political representatives and officials .