Business is booming in North Yorkshire according to a new survey which rates it as the country's second most profitable county.

Dun and Bradstreet, a London-based business information consultancy, uses a database listing the largest companies in Britain, to find out where the highest proportion of profit-making businesses are located.

The database records the details of 50,000 big companies, along with building societies, firms of solicitors and accountants, and from this register the consultancy has concluded 86.4 per cent of businesses in North Yorkshire are making a profit.

This puts the county only 0.1 per cent behind Lincolnshire, which topped the list with 86.5 per cent.

Dave Wilson, of Yorkshire and Humberside CBI, said the results of the survey confirmed what many businesses in the country already knew - North Yorkshire is a good place to set up a business.

"The county has the lowest rates of unemployment and the highest standard of living in the region which attracts people to move here and set up the kinds of business which are going to be profitable," he said.

"We have the biosciences related industries in York and North Yorkshire has also been successful in bringing in high tech industries and food processing companies. Innovative businesses have also sprung up around the tourist trade in the last few years which have proved to be very profitable."

But an economic downturn which will cost five per cent of all manufacturing jobs has been predicted today by an independent group of economists. They believe the strength of the pound will hit the manufacturing sector so hard that unemployment, currently at around 1.4 million, will rise to 1.5 million next year, and climb to 1.86 million by 2002, its report said.

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