The City of Surrey launched its 2024 Economic Strategy titled “Investing in our Future” at the Mayor’s State of the City Address on Feb. 15.
This Council-approved plan provides a roadmap for how Surrey will build the city’s economy over the next five years while focusing on the accelerated creation of well-paying jobs and attraction of transformative investments.
The strategy outlines the need for the creation of 300,000 jobs by 2042 to ensure there is one job per resident worker by the time Surrey reaches a population of one million residents.
“The City of Surrey’s newly unveiled 2024 Economic Strategy stands as a pivotal milestone to guide us to create new jobs and opportunities to support our growth,” said Mayor Brenda Locke. “With Surrey projected to be a city with one million people as early as 2042, Council is committed to meeting the target of one job for every working resident in Surrey. As we grow, our focus remains firmly on the people – cultivating job opportunities, enriching livability, and addressing the needs of our ever-growing population.”
Over the next five years, the City will focus on increasing Surrey’s global investment attraction efforts and enhancing entertainment and health care options for residents. Additionally, the strategy outlines a road map for the launch of Innovation Boulevard 2.0 to promote innovative opportunities in health technology, clean technology, advanced manufacturing, and agritech.
“Together these strategies will allow Surrey to have an economic framework that supports Surrey’s tremendous growth and our potential to be leaders in all aspects of the new economy focused on the technology, manufacturing, and agriculture sectors,” Locke said.
“To accelerate job creation, we need to attract transformative investments to Surrey. We define transformative investments as those that – in addition to creating high-quality jobs – will increase business-supporting assets (e.g., hotels or a convention centre), bolster our innovation ecosystem, enhance infrastructure, or are in a priority sector. To succeed, we also need to enhance our investment readiness – that is, the state and availability of various elements that companies require to set up operations and thrive in a location. We want sites to be fully ready for company operations within 18 to 24 months of an investment decision being made. Importantly, investment readiness actions are also designed to support the expansion of existing Surrey businesses. Key actions related to attracting transformative investments include targeting priority markets to increase qualified investment leads suitable for Surrey, streamlining permitting, and refreshing the Invest Surrey brand to support promotion activities,” the Mayor said.
