To ask the Minister of Enterprise, Trade and Investment how many businesses have received financial support to date in 2012; and how many jobs have been created during this period.

Provisional results show that between 1st January and 31st August 2012, Invest NI offered support to 1,841 businesses. These included 651 employment-related projects which plan to create 3,519 jobs. Since these projects will take some time to fully implement, the jobs associated with them may take up to five years to be fully realised. It should be noted that grant payments are normally made in relation to the number of jobs created.

Although actual job creation figures for all these projects are not yet available, information available for the ‘Jobs Fund’ shows that this programme has created just over 1,000 jobs during January – August 2012. However, not all of these jobs relate to assistance offered during this period.

In addition, during this period Invest NI engaged with more than 1600 individuals who were interested in starting their own business, 852 of which completed business plans. These businesses are expected to create more than 360 new jobs.