Scottish Enterprise said it delivered a “record set of results” for the past year, helping businesses to scale and contributing to Scotland’s “economic transformation.”

Scotland’s national economic development agency said it worked with 1,300 companies between April 2023 and March 2024, enabling over 16,700 new jobs to be created or safeguarded.

This included over 9,000 jobs generated from inward investors to Scotland, the highest number achieved in the last five years.

Scottish Enterprise said it invested £53.4 million into 117 “innovative, high growth potential, early stage companies” which leveraged £152 million of external investment, and generated £62 million in income.

The agnecy said: “Support provided to businesses last year also unlocked £1.9 billion of capital investment spend in Scotland, £2.15 billion in planned exports, and over £449 million in business innovation investment, representing some of the best annual results ever achieved by ambitious companies and entrepreneurs working with Scottish Enterprise.”

Scottish Enterprise Chief Executive Adrian Gillespie said: “These are outstanding results that demonstrate Scottish Enterprise is helping businesses right across Scotland drive up levels of innovation, international activity and investment to build a fairer, greener and stronger Scottish economy.

“Such a successful year requires considerable effort and huge aspiration from the companies we work with, our partners, and our own teams at home and overseas.

“I’m pleased that last year’s performance has also helped lay the foundations for the introduction of our new missions-based approach this year, with almost 60% of new inward investment jobs last year coming from the energy transition sector.

“Identifying energy transition opportunities, along with increasing levels of capital investment and productivity, and maximising innovation to drive up the number of scaling businesses, are our long-term areas of focus to drive economic transformation in Scotland.”