Trade figures released this morning showed that the UK's trade in goods deficit was unchanged between February and March.

Given the current sluggish nature of the economy we need to pull on every possible lever to try to promote economic growth. One of the key aspects of this is ensuring that our workforce is fit and healthy, that people are in work and their skills are being fully utilised.

Ever since the financial crisis began to subside the debate has raged about how we grow our economy based on manufacturing and trade. As many companies in the West Midlands will tell you, this is nothing new and they have been quietly exporting their way around the globe way before the need to find a new economic model began.

Benjamin Disraeli is reported to have coined the phrase 'lies, damned lies and statistics'. Last week's GDP figures certainly attracted plenty of attention and, criticism in some quarters for confirming the UK is supposedly back in recession, when a raft of business surveys, including EEF's have painted a rather more positive picture.

Did the Budget set out a vision for the UK Economy ? The short answer is no. We needed a Budget last month that focused on setting out the ambitions for growth. Where does the Chancellor see the British economy heading by 2015 or beyond?

Less than four months since the announcement of his 'credit easing' programme at the Autumn Statement, the Chancellor has launched the National Loan Guarantee Scheme.

Next week, the government will set out its latest thoughts in its March Budget on the economy and the measures it is taking to encourage stronger growth. Just ahead of this, EEF will be hosting its first Manufacturing Conference, where we will be looking at what should be done to create the environment for manufacturers to invest in the UK rather than a growing range of locations around the world. I strongly recommend that the Chancellor picks up the messages coming from industry at our conference and uses his Budget to send a clear message to manufacturers that the UK is the right for them to make their next major investment.

The financial crisis and recession hit the UK hard. The recovery in output for the overall economy has been painfully slow.

UK manufacturing has seen a stronger a rebound but a lasting scar from the financial crisis is the fractious relationship between the manufacturing and financial services sectors.

On the 6th March EEF will be hosting the first ever National Manufacturing Conference, in partnership with The Manufacturer. Ahead of this we'll be discussing some of the key issues for UK manufacturing on this blog. The first of these is how to engineer growth through exports.

When the Government launched its review of English waste policy it promised to help unlock the real economic value of wastes and assess what policies were really needed to achieve this. Six months on from the government publishing the result of this exercise we ask whether Defra has succeeded in increasing the opportunity for sustainable waste management and resource efficiency - and if not, what needs to be done.