• This is a garbled statement that does not properly describe any single statistic.
  • In 1998, Belfast accounted for 28.8% of Northern Ireland’s total GVA. The most recent figures, which cover 2023, indicate it now accounts for 32.9%.
  • A UU report from last year indicated that in 1998 Belfast’s average GVA per capita was 42% higher than the NI average and that, by 2022, its average GVA per capita was 80% above the average – however, this is not the same thing as stated in the claim.
  • Ultimately this claim appears to hinge on two figures, taken at different times in relation to a poorly-explained statistic.
  • Even when correctly laid out, that statistic does not indicate that “regional inequality has doubled”. Two datapoints focused on one of NI’s eleven local authority areas cannot adequately capture the shape and scale of NI’s economy on a regional level. Furthermore, there are significant limitations to using GVA per capita as a measure of regional inequality based on its definition.
  • Regional balance is a complex topic dependent on many factors.

In a 26 January Assembly debate about economic trends on the island of Ireland, SDLP MLA Sinéad McLaughlin claimed:

“Regional inequality has doubled here since the Good Friday Agreement. That is shocking. In 1998, Belfast’s GVA was 42%. That now sits at 80%. People in the north-west do not experience regional balance. They see that too many good jobs are still concentrated in and around Belfast, and too many young people have to leave if they are to build a future.”

Is this correct?

Not exactly – and, more importantly, the statistic itself is not properly communicated.

Perhaps the first reading that comes to mind  (note that statistical statements emphatically should not require literary interpretation) is that Belfast’s Gross Value Added (GVA, a definition is provided below) represented 42% of NI’s total GVA in 1998 but that, according to the most recent statistics, it now represents 80% of the total.

This is not accurate. Official data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicates that 28.8% of NI’s total GVA in 1998 was attributable to Belfast, whereas in 2023 (the latest available figures) the proportion was 32.9%.

However, based on our research, outlined below, it appears that the SDLP MLA was referring to figures mentioned in an Ulster University Economic Policy Centre paper published in May 2025, examining how to deliver balanced regional growth in NI.

This report looked at ONS data on GVA per capita in different NI regions and found that, in 1998, Belfast’s GVA per capita was 42% higher than Northern Ireland’s average GVA per capita, while according to the most recent figures (at the time of publication) Belfast’s GVA per head was 80% higher than the NI average.

For various reasons – including that the numbers themselves are a precise match – this appears to be the figure referred to by Ms McLaughlin. However, what she said – “In 1998, Belfast’s GVA was 42%. That now sits at 80%.” – does not accurately reflect what those statistics mean.

Furthermore, even the actual data on which this claim was based, correctly explained, do not indicate that “regional inequality has doubled since the Good Friday Agreement”, as stated by Ms McLaughlin.

Which is not to say that Northern Ireland (or other places) do not have issues with regional economic imbalance. The various dynamics of a regional economy are complex and varied. A proper understanding of the situation is unlikely to be found in just one or two statistics – and certainly cannot be explained by one observation about one of the eleven local authority areas here.

Read on for more details, and also some pointers about where to find a fuller analysis of the state of the local economy and how it affects different parts of Northern Ireland.

  • Source

FactCheckNI contacted Ms McLaughlin about this claim. At the time of writing, we are yet to receive a response.

  • GVA and GDP

Gross Value Added (GVA) is similar to the perhaps better known Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in that it is a measure of the size of an economy over a given period. They are similar but measure slightly different things. 

  • GVA (Gross Value Added) is the value businesses add through production: it is output minus the value of intermediate inputs (materials, energy, purchased services).
  • GDP measures the monetary value of all final goods and services produced in the economy, which means it effectively takes GVA and then adds taxes on products and subtracts subsidies on products (in simple terms: GDP = GVA + product taxes – product subsidies).

GVA per capita is often used to compare economic activity within a country, especially across regions, cities, and smaller areas, because it ties more directly to where production happens and avoids having to allocate product taxes and subsidies to small places (which is hard to do cleanly).

There are three methods for calculating GVA:

  • GVA(I) (income approach) measures value added by adding up the incomes generated by production
  • GVA(P) (production approach): measures value added as output minus intermediate consumption
  • GVA(B) (balanced): a single “best” estimate made by combining the income and production approaches

Throughout this analysis when GVA is referenced it is referring to GVA(B).

  • Figures

According to the claim:

“In 1998, Belfast’s GVA was 42%. That now sits at 80%.”

This is slightly muddled phrasing however perhaps the most obvious meaning, especially in the context of regional balance, is that this is a statement about Belfast’s share of Northern Ireland’s total GVA – i.e. that in 1998 Belfast accounted for 42% of NI’s GVA, and that it now accounts for 80%.

This is not the case. UK small area gross value added (GVA) estimates data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in September 2025 show that the percentage share of GVA attributable to the Belfast Local Authority area increased from 28.8% in 1998 to 32.9% in 2023.

  • Report

In May 2025, the Ulster University Economic Policy Centre (UUEPC) published a report called  Delivering balanced regional growth in Northern Ireland (which itself was cited in an Irish Times article on 21 January, just five days before the Assembly debate in question).

The UUEPC report includes an analysis of economic performance in Northern Ireland’s 11 current council areas, which states:

“Regional imbalance in GVA per capita goes back at least two decades in NI – Figure 7 [Figure 1 in this article] shows Belfast with a GVA per capita almost 42% above the NI average going back to 1998. Given its annual growth rate since has been 0.4 percentage points faster than the second fastest-growing Council area, Derry City & Strabane, Belfast has ended the period almost 80% above the NI average. In the case of Derry City & Strabane, it began the period 77% of the NI average and ended it closer (at 85%) but still well behind top performing Council areas.”

The chart mentioned in this excerpt is below. It is a graph of the 1998 GVA per capita of each council area on the X-axis, against average compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in GVA on the Y-axis.

Figure 1 – source: UUEPC paper

It’s worth noting that these details are correctly noted in the Irish Times article, which states:

“In 1998, Belfast had a GVA that was 42 per cent higher than the Northern Ireland average, but this was now 80 per cent, the study said.”

The specific numbers in this report are taken from the ONS data on Gross Value Added (GVA) per capita, Regional gross value added (balanced) per head and income components; at the time of writing the most recent data available covered up to 2023 and was published on the 17th of June 2025.

In 1998, GVA per head in Northern Ireland was £11,684 and in Belfast it was  £16,673. By 2022 (the most recent year for which detailed NI data is available) GVA per head in Northern Ireland was £26,538, whereas in Belfast it was £47,466.

  • Assessing the claim

It seems clear that the SDLP MLA has miscommunicated some real and accurate statistics.

Based on official data, Belfast’s GVA per capita was almost 42% above the NI average in 1998 whereas, based on the most recent figures, it is now 80% above the NI average.

However, what Ms McLaughlin actually said was: 

“In 1998, Belfast’s GVA was 42%. That now sits at 80%.”

This is not the same thing, quite evidently: the extent to which one area of NI has a per capita GVA above the average per capita GVA is not the same thing as that area’s GVA itself.

As outlined above, the most obvious (but not entirely certain, ultimately this is a garbled statement by the MLA) reading of this would be that Belfast accounted for 42% of NI’s GVA in 1998 and that this has since risen to 80%, neither of which are accurate.

That said, given the way the numbers used in the statistics match up entirely with the UUEPC paper from last year – and the Irish Times article a few days before the debate – we can be reasonably confident that we have identified the actual statistics to which the MLA was referring.

However, there are a few further observations that can be made about the MLA’s wider comments.

  • Is this regional inequality?

Ms McLaughlin said:

“Regional inequality has doubled here since the Good Friday Agreement. That is shocking. In 1998, Belfast’s GVA was 42%. That now sits at 80%. People in the north-west do not experience regional balance. They see that too many good jobs are still concentrated in and around Belfast, and too many young people have to leave if they are to build a future.”

The average GVA per capita in Belfast has gone from 1.42 times the NI average in 1998 to 1.8 times the NI average according to the latest figures.

However, that does not mean that “regional inequality” has doubled. There are eleven council areas in Northern Ireland and the degree to which one of those areas has a GVA per capita above the NI average is not a full and proper measure of regional balance within the economy.

Furthermore, while it is a useful statistic that does tell us something about the nature of the local economy, there are limitations on the use of GVA per capita as a proxy for regional inequality. GVA is calculated on a workplace basis; it is allocated to where allocated to the location where the economic activity takes place and not where employees live.

This means that places that see a lot of inbound commuting (such as Belfast in the context of Northern Ireland) will have an inflated GVA per capita ratio. This is because the economic output of Belfast commuters will be attributed to Belfast but the people involved won’t be included in the denominator for the per capita calculation. As the ONS explains:

“Total GVA(B) estimates in millions of pounds sterling (£ million) are divided by the total resident population of a region (including the economically inactive) to give GVA per head in pounds sterling (£).”

  • Further context for regional balance

For a further demonstration of this effect, the small area GVA estimates go beyond local authority areas and into much more granular detail.

By some distance, the small area with the highest GVA in Northern Ireland is “Shaftesbury 1”, an area that covers the most central parts of Belfast City Centre, an area roughly from Belfast Grand Central Station in the west to Lanyon Place in the East.

This small area was attributable for £5.28bn of GVA in 2023; 9.4% of the entire total for Northern Ireland (£56.1bn). However the population of this area is small; only 2,409 at the 2011 census (the most recent date available for this particular geographical area). This would suggest a GVA per capita of £2.2m per capita.

This is clearly absurd; it is obviously due to the output of workers in Belfast City Centre being allocated to that small area. It does, however, illustrate the limitations of using GVA per capita of a city with significant levels of inbound commuting as a proxy for regional inequality.

None of which is to say that regional imbalances are not an issue for the Northern Ireland economy (or economies in general). However, the details of this are complicated and certainly not all pointing in one direction.

The UUEPC paper cited above has lots of interesting analysis of the state and shape of NI’s economy, including that (per the most recent data at the time the paper was published in May 2025):

  • Belfast residents lag behind the Northern Ireland average for median earnings and Gross Domestic Household Income (GDHI).
  • Belfast had the lowest employment rate of all Local Authority areas and the second highest inactivity rate behind Derry City and Strabane.

Of course, these observations don’t tell the full story on regional imbalances any more than an analysis of GVA per capita. For a more complete understanding, take a look at that UUEPC report in full.