ENTREPRENEURS, especially the young, faced with a dearth of suitable, career-based job opportunities are making the most of these testing economic times to set up on their own.

We’ve seen a marked increase in the number of enquiries from entrepreneurs over recent months looking for available property in Newport to establish a variety of different businesses.

With UK unemployment among the 16-24 year group currently standing at 1m skilled and motivated people understand that traditional career paths are not available able to them and, by force of circumstances,  are now seeking rewarding and creative self-employment alternatives.

There is currently a range of suitable and very cost effective space available in the centre of Newport with some persuasive incentives offered not just by landlords but also from Newport City Council to start ups.

Attractive and eminently suitable space for start ups and also for those looking to take their first step away from a home-based business in places such as Charles Street, Skinner Street, Upper Dock Street and also High Street to name just four.

The city’s Market Arcade is getting a spruce up and if it ends up refurbished to the standard of the city’s Newport Arcade will undoubtedly prove a magnet for smaller businesses and start ups.

Meanwhile news that Sir Terry Matthews is heading up a programme to establish a cutting edge technology centric graduate ‘boot camp’ in the centre of the city of Newport is very welcome news indeed.

Sir Terry is at the head of an exciting new drive which will select ten of the best UK graduates in the fields of science, electronics, engineering and computers and hot house them as part of a project named Alacrity.

Located in the Udex House on Bristol Packet Wharf on the banks of the River Wye in between the Riverfront Theatre and the new £35m University campus,  the Alacrity Foundation Graduate Entrepreneurship programmed, supported by the Welsh Government Sir Terry's Wesley Clover and private philanthropists, aims to develop the global entrepreneurs and businesses of the future.

Alacrity House, as it will be known, will see the hand picked graduates spending a year helping to develop new products, innovate and learn how to build high value, world class sustainable businesses in the information and communication sectors.

This, along with the opening of the aforementioned university campus, is another giant stride in repositioning the city of Newport as a connected centre for 21^st century ICT related businesses.

The centre of Newport is by anyone’s reckoning is currently looking a little worse for wear with the recent high profile shop closures leaving gaping cavities in its civic smile.

However with the energy and enthusiasm of the range and variety of new start up businesses looking to enter the market and the gold standard entrepreneurship credentials demonstrated time and again by Sir Terry Matthews an exciting bright, altogether new future may well be emerging for Newport the first Welsh city at the internationally recognised Gateway to Wales.