The report details the loss of 12,747 jobs in manufacturing industry since the beginning of the year. This follows headline reports in the last weeks of 1,500 jobs going at car manufacturers Rover, owned by BMW, and 1,100 jobs at the German electronics firm Siemens' Tyneside factory. The AEEU engineering union predicts that as many as 200,000 manufacturing jobs are at risk, particularly in small scale companies which are likely to go broke. Motor industry analysts are warning that more than 15,000 jobs are at risk in the automotive components industry. Decisions by Rover, Nissan, General Motors and Leyland Daf to buy components at lower costs overseas are being cited.
Manufacturing now accounts for only a fifth of the British economy.
Industry bosses and trade union leaders have made repeated calls for interest rates to be brought down and complain that the high value of the pound, which has risen by 30 percent against the Deutsch Mark over the last two years, has hit British exports. Since 1992 when the financial markets forced the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism tying it to other European currencies, sterling has floated in the currency markets. Latest accounts, however, are citing the Asian crisis as the root cause of Britain's woes. Siemens' closure of its new Tyneside plant was entirely due to competition from Asia. In this case the value of the pound was irrelevant since chips are traded in dollars.