NORTHERN IRELAND's development agency Invest NI is seeking to stimulate some £2 billion (€2.6 billion) in investment over the coming three years, its latest corporate plan reveals.

The plan seeks to realise new wealth through increased salaries and exports via higher expenditure on research and development and greater production of higher value goods and services.

The programme includes a series of accelerated targets which Invest NI sees as ambitious in the global business climate. It is aiming for productivity rises of 6 per cent per year in real terms per manufacturing job and 4 per cent per annum in tradable services.

Reflecting greater emphasis on the knowledge economy, the programme is also seeking to boost R&D in the SME (small and medium enterprises) sector by 8 per cent per annum and by 5 per cent among larger concerns.

On this basis the plan is seeking to generate some 6,500 jobs based on inward investment, 85 per cent of which should be at or above the mean Northern Ireland wage of £17,000 (€22,160).

Launching the plan in Belfast yesterday, Invest NI chairman Stephen Kingon said: "We need more companies becoming bigger and more profitable and we need to attract and develop new clients, whether local on internationally owned, who can introduce higher value-added activity to our economy."

Chief executive Leslie Morrison said the North offered "talent and reasonable cost". Invest NI had three "pathways to growth", beginning with policies to realise the potential of the economy. The second, focused over the medium term, sought to promote what he called "sectoral shift" or the development of new products and services, which would be realised through foreign direct investment.

The third and longest-term objective was to place the Northern economy at the leading edge of "frontier technologies". This development would take 10 to 15 years to realise, he said.

The plan, which is now open to eight weeks' consultation, highlights major economic and structural problems such as overdependence on a public sector which makes up 62 per cent of the economy. The private sector is correspondingly small, especially in comparison to the Republic and Britain. There are just 58,000 businesses registered for VAT and 74 per cent of these employ fewer than four people.

Linked to that is relatively low productivity, little innovation, and low business formation totals.