Invest NI spent double the NI average in city

And whilst proportionately, the East of the province received more assistance than the West, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) jobs promoted were evenly split between the two.

According to the NIAO the East’s favourable FDI investment per head figures (37 per cent better than in the West) are largely dependent on the Bombardier `C’ series project at Shorts in East Belfast.

“If this is discounted, there is only a 5 per cent variance with the West, as opposed to the 37 per cent variance,” say the auditors.

Addressing Londonderry’s situation the report points out that it spent £855 per person on inward investment. It spends just £355 per person in Northern Ireland generally.

“Per capita spend on inward investment has been notably lower for several individual disadvantaged District Council Areas located in the West than for the Northern Ireland average.

“However, assistance per head in the Derry DCA (£853) was over twice as high as the Northern Ireland average (£355),” it states.

Notwithstanding this higher expenditure in Londonderry other areas of the North West are considerably worse off.

“Aside from Belfast and Derry, the other disadvantaged District Council Areas had lower levels of inward investment per head than the overall average (£240) – Cookstown (£197), Strabane (£192), Newry and Mourne (£166), Dungannon (£136) and Omagh (£81),” the report notes.