Do you remember the growth plan? maybe not. Rishi Sunak? Not sure.

This should be the government’s long-term blueprint for the UK economy after scrap 2017 Industrial Strategy. The transfer of strategic economic thinking from the business sector to the Ministry of Finance, faded in the process.

Faced with outcry, prime minister and business secretary wrote a joint letter The plan is seen as “going further than ever on key policies and guiding the government’s long-term growth strategy as we build back better”.

Hardly anyone has heard of it since – although the construction behind it doesn’t seem to be going very well.

No mention of the plan amid this week’s catastrophic events Spring StatementThe effort has failed to address soaring energy prices, the cost of living crisis and Protect vulnerable families.

longer term ambition Promote business investment The situation may not be much better. Growth plans are part of the problem.

Prime Minister’s pledge on Wednesday more tax deductions The business investment, after his two-year excess deduction, ends next April.Weak UK capital investment underpins productivity gap by half with Germany and France; higher corporate tax rates and more generous incentives are New ways to stimulate investment After years of unsuccessfully cutting the business tax rate.

Office of Budget Responsibilityhowever, on Wednesday Halve the estimated peak investment from excess deductions.among Confidence wanes, investment intentions declined, it noted. A Deloitte survey in December found that only a quarter of CFOs expected the policy to have a positive impact on their spending.

To be fair, short-lived tax breaks are always limited: the average investment cycle in manufacturing is seven years.Sunak’s Spring Manifesto’s human capital philosophy also echoes those from His Mais lecture last monthand the skills-infrastructure-innovation framework for growth programs.

The obvious way to do this is to pull a fiscal lever or two and hope that the outcome fits exactly with the government’s priorities or the country’s needs.

This is unlikely to be enough. “Companies invest because they see an opportunity for growth and profit, not because you change their marginal tax rate,” said IPPR’s George Dibb. “You need coordination between the economy and the government to send a very clear signal on where it’s going.”

Oddly, the rest of the government is still talking in more strategic language. The upgrade white paper, co-authored by Andy Haldane, former chair of the Industrial Strategy Council, has 12 “missions” to define what is needed for a cross-government effort to solve a seemingly intractable problem.This various strategies Government-wide rollouts in recent months – from innovation to net zero – have sometimes taken a more radical tone.

There are several issues here. First, it is difficult for companies to keep up with this fragmentation of strategic thinking. Second, these aspirations will be hard to come by without cross-departmental coordination and the kind of political charisma that the Treasury is unlikely to provide (it just worries about being asked for cash, by the way).

Third, a lack of coordination and support leads to slow and ineffective “market making,” to borrow the words of the CBI, the famous flag bearer of big government and interventionism.

It’s not just public money (though some help). For example, the market is still waiting for a policy framework to support hydrogen investment, and while it may mimic the success of offshore wind contracts for difference, this clearly hinders spending and is absent.The energy transition has become more urgent in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a new energy strategy expected to be launched next week could unleash huge investments, but it will require Huge push in policy, regulation, planning and more.

In addition to reverse-engineering the idea of ??developing an appropriate industrial strategy with the relevant agencies, one option is the emergency committee established after the financial crisis, namely National Economic Council. Without a clearer plan and stronger implementation than currently offered, the Treasury’s ambitions to boost business investment in the UK could be dashed.

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