Award of INTERNATIONAL MACROECONOMIC AND CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS SUBSCRIPTION SERVICE

Exporting plays a critical role in advanced economies, helping drive innovation and productivity and boosting growth and incomes. In May 2019 the Scottish Government published our export growth plan, A Trading Nation, , which sets out the scope and scale of the exporting opportunity available to Scottish business. The plan seeks to sharpen the focus of the role the public sector and its partners can play in driving exports as part of a wider system of business support.At the heart of this plan is the need to increase exports as a percentage of GDP. A target was set of increasing exports to 25% of our GDP by 2029. Meeting this target will require an estimated additional £25bn of exports by 2029. The economic impact of meeting this target would be to add around £3.5bn to GDP and to create around 17,500 more jobs with an increase in annual tax take of around £500m.A Trading Nation undertook a comprehensive, data intensive, review of Scotland’s export performance to international markets. The output of this work led our segmentation of our export base, ranking of international markets, and refocussing of export support and promotion activities both domestically and internationally. In particular, we asked our agencies to target their export promotion efforts in our top 26 ranked markets. These markets are generally advanced economies in Europe and North America and the Far East.A Trading Nation is underpinned by a great deal of historical trade data that provides us with a wealth of information. However, this data on its own does not provide us with the information we need to take a better informed, long term policy view on each of our 26 priority markets.We therefore need a subscription service that supplements our historic trade data with current commercial, trade and macroeconomic data & forecasting. Alongside this data should sit an element of political news reporting and analysis. Patient policy analysis of this combination of information by DITI will allow the Scottish Government to take a much more holistic view on its trading relationships with priority markets and help guide the Scottish Government and agencies on how and when we should mobilise and focus our limited resources in these markets.To help underpin the above work, DITI requires the ability to easily and efficiently access independent, expert macroeconomic information and analysis. Consequently, DITI wishes to invite quotes from suitably-qualified organisations who offer a subscription service that delivers access to ‘off-the-shelf’, independent, expert macroeconomic updates, briefing, and analysis on the top 26 markets listed in A Trade Nation.