Let me start by thanking you – directors, executives managers representing companies from all over the UK – for the contribution you are making to Britain.

I want to thank you this year especially because, together, we are facing the challenges of a rapidly changing global economy and living through the largest restructuring of industry and services the global economy has ever seen.

you deserve and have earned the nations appreciation for your steadfastness, your resilience, your leadership and courage to change.

We meet here at an important economic moment.

I believe 2005 will go down in history as a year of challenge when the scale scope and speed of globalisation pressed in on us as never before - not just terror on a global scale; but the rapid trebling of oil prices, itself a direct result of the new Asia's escalating demand for oil; the recurrence of global inflation; the re-emergence of protectionism not least because of the loss of jobs across manufacturing in Europe and America, and the shift of service jobs through outsourcing. These are all events driven by global change, most of all the dramatic entry of 2 billion people in India and China into the world economy.

But throughout my aim for Britain has been to maintain and entrench our hard won economic stability.

And I believe that if we now make the right long term decisions, founded upon that stability, Britain is well suited to be one of the great successes of this new global era.

The very qualities we have – our belief in stability, openness to trade and a culture of enterprise and innovation – are the qualities the new global economy demands.

My vision is of a Britain made for globalisation – the location of choice and the place for business to be.

If we have the strength to make the long term decisions for stability and if we capitalise on our distinctive advantages by investing in education, science and infrastructure, Britain is well placed to become world leaders in some of the worlds’ fastest growing, most wealth creating sectors.

And around these objectives, it is my determination that we, government and business together, build a shared national economic purpose.

Every time in past decades when the CBI met in conference your constant theme had to be Britain’s stop-go economy, the failure to control inflation, economic cycle after economic cycle, Britain first in, last out, worst hit in world downturns.

Explore Economics

• Pre-Budget Report 2009

• Budget 2009

• World Economic Forum

• The Times MPC

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