One of West Virginia’s top economic development officials told lawmakers that 78 active deals have the potential to blossom.
That’s despite a tough economic environment across the nation, said Christina Davies, deputy secretary for economic development.
“The headline is that, unfortunately, deal flow has been down across the entire United States for the last year. This is something I’ve been able to verify with numerous economic development peers across the country,” Davies told members of the Joint Standing Committee on Economic Development.
“But we are not just resting on our laurels in West Virginia, waiting for that deal flow to pick back up. We have 78 active deals in our pipeline right now. 14 of those are expansion opportunities for existing companies, and 64 are new business opportunities, and they’re looking at sites all across the state for those.”
Davies addressed lawmakers during interim legislative meetings at Canaan Valley. She said state development officials average about 10 new business opportunities a month, with about three of those reaching the finish line.
“If you had to be forced to pick one thing, your best opportunity as of today for short-term gain, what would that be?” asked Delegate J.B. Akers, R-Kanawha.
Advanced manufacturing was the response from Davies.
“When you really look at the heritage of West Virginia, our manufacturing prowess and our success, that continues to be, I think, really the number one area that we hear we get a lot of interest in,” Davies said.
But there are several economic sectors where West Virginia has a chance to succeed, she said, so “I would hate to put all of our eggs in one basket.”
House Finance Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, asked about a line item veto by the governor for the current fiscal year amounting to millions of dollars for the Water Development Authority. Criss wanted the reasoning behind the veto.
“It was general dollars in the back of the budget to go to the Water Development Authority, and evidently he didn’t care for it,” Criss said.
Criss also asked about continued concerns expressed by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce about the sluggish job market in West Virginia.
Davies said that’s a result of “looking at backward-looking data, which anybody would do, because none of the data provided by the federal government gives you a today snapshot — and unfortunately is making determinations about the impact of the last 12 months on things that have taken years and decades to actually develop to get us to this point.
“All that I know how to do as an economic developer, is to work to plant seeds every day that will yield to the type of fruit and abundance that we want to see in the state.”