Insider Media Limited

Marketing Birmingham is well on its way to creating 12,000 jobs over a four-year period, chief executive Neil Rami has told Insider. Amidst concern about the West Midlands' high unemployment rate, Rami said the region was in for a recruitment boost as 26 key locations within the Greater Birmingham enterprise zone are to be unveiled next week.

Rami spoke to Insider as it was revealed that almost 1,800 jobs have been created as a result of inward investment in Birmingham in the eight months to December 2011.

He said Marketing Birmingham hoped to surpass its target of generating 12,000 jobs by 2015.

"Birmingham will look and feel like a very different place in three or four years' time," he predicted. "We'll have a decision on the high speed rail plans, the enterprise zone will be in play and I imagine we'll have a very different landscape in terms of infrastructure thanks to the Big City Plan.

"We're currently creating about 220 jobs a month on the back of inward investment and hope this will continue to grow in 2012."

With lacklustre figures released by the Office for National Statistics yesterday (14 December) stating that the West Midlands' unemployment rate had risen to 243,000 in the last three months, Rami is determined that job creation remains top of Marketing Birmingham's agenda.

And he said the region's workforce would be boosted by news next week, which would reveal 26 Birmingham locations which would benefit from enterprise zone status.

"Businesses to benefit will be a mix of finance, business services, ICT and media," he said. "We want small and growing businesses to really take advantage of theses locations; the level of businesses rate uplift will allow us to research the sites better and invest that money back into the region."

Rami would not disclose the sites, but said, "they fit neatly into what was discussed with the Big City Plan.

Alongside the investment potential of the enterprise zone, Rami said there had been a hike in the number of overseas companies interested in Birmingham's automotive, research and development and aerospace sectors

Wouter Schuitemaker, investment director at the organisation's inward investment arm Business Birmingham, said it had focused on "raising the profile of Birmingham, and its sectoral strengths, on a global scale" to boost jobs numbers over the year.

He added nearly 40 per cent of the positions created in 2011 were in financial services and more than 20 per cent in transport technologies.

"As we move into 2012, we will continue to build on these strengths but also focus more strongly on life sciences and digital media," said Schuitemaker. "Due to our recent success Business Birmingham is also extending our target audience to 10 markets from four, including China, Japan, Australia and Switzerland, based on higher than expected levels of interest from these markets."