• By GARY PERILLOUX
• Advocate business writer
• Published: Jan 4, 2010

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Louisiana economic development officials are pursuing $10 billion worth of business and industry prospects, with the odds for successful recruitment likely to rise in the second half of 2010, a state official said.

New headquarters prospects, along with research and development and manufacturing firms, are on the economic development department’s radar for 2010, a year in which the state will launch a strategy targeting specific high-growth companies for which Louisiana is well-suited.

“There’s definitely some nice victories we’re expecting in 2010, and certainly several of them in the first half of the year,” said Stephen Moret, the state’s economic development secretary.

Recession, difficult financing conditions and uncertainty about federal environmental legislation stalled many industrial projects the state sought to win in 2009, More said.

“There’s continuing concern, in some cases severe concern, about cap-and-trade legislation,” Moret said, “and concern about that is causing a large amount of capital investment to sit on the sidelines. There are projects that would proceed today, but for that challenge.”

Those concerns will linger in early 2010, he said, with project wins more likely later in the year. That forecast applies to the proposed $2 billion-plus Nucor Corp. pig iron mill expected to go to either Brazil or St. James Parish, where Nucor has purchased land. Louisiana once hoped to get that project by the end of 2008.

“We’ll have some announcements on projects we’ve been working on in the last six to 18 months,” Moret said of the first half of 2010. “The bigger projects — in terms of capital investment and the site selection activity nationally — I think both of those will pick up in the second half of the year as people start to see that the national recovery is showing some durability.”

Despite a rugged 2009 in which a nearly two-year national recession may have ended late in the year, Louisiana’s economic development efforts edged the state’s 2008 performance.

Louisiana ended 2009 with $2.5 billion in new capital investment, up slightly from $2.48 billion in 2008. About 21,500 new direct — and indirect — jobs are attached to the same 2009 projects, the state estimated.

From 2008, that’s a 25 percent increase in jobs leveraged by economic development projects, Moret said.

The quality of those jobs also improved in 2009. Projected annual tax revenue generated by new jobs rose from $45 million in 2008 to $53 million last year, Moret said.

Consensus economic forecasts point to 2010 becoming a recovery year, with 2011 offering the possibility of robust growth, he said.

“Obviously, we’re coming out of a difficult national period,” Moret said. “But I think the U.S. recovery will benefit Louisiana, and I’m looking for a positive year (in 2010).”

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