The Governor-elect Terry Branstad (R) has big plans for Iowa businesses.

His first priority is to attract jobs and keep them in Iowa. He plans to begin implementing his aggressive five-step plan to revitalize the declining Iowa job market and make it easier for small businesses to get off the ground. However, he did not provide any specific timeline for the plan.

Overall, Branstad plans to increase exports by 20 percent during the next five years to create 13,000 new jobs. This would require an increase of $1.8 billion to a total of $9 billion in exports to create 12,600 new jobs.

Branstad said he will revitalize Iowan business by providing K-12 entrepreneurship education, tax credits for startup business and decrease corporate property tax.

“We need to make it easier to start businesses in our state,” Branstad said. “We also need to restructure the department of economic development so we can have an effective public-private partnership.”

He also plans to give a 50 percent tax credit to businesses that pay tuition and offer jobs to college students. Aside from helping to alleviate student debt, by giving the tax credit to businesses, Branstad said that by 2015, Iowa will be graduating more than 5,000 students a year with technical degrees. He believes they will stay in Iowa and contribute to the consumer economy.

Branstad created a plan called Iowa Partnership for Economic Progress in order to promote private-public relationships and market Iowa business both nationally and globally.

“We have a lot of plans for it,” Branstad said. “We’re going to put our team together and hit the ground running.”

Part of IPEP provides for an organization called IGNITE, which will be teams of economic development professionals to work with companies across the state.

IGNITE stands for:

• Initiate contacts with employers in all sectors of Iowa’s economy to visit with them about barriers that exist which are hindering their ability to grow and what programs are available from the state to assist them in employing more Iowans.

• Gaining new job-creating opportunities by contacting prospective employers and site selection professionals, be it across the country or globally.

• Negate the declining image employers nationwide have developed of Iowa during the past 4 years, and let them know Iowa is once again open for business.

• Involve existing Iowa employers in a peer-to-peer global marketing campaign.

• Target immediately industries where Iowa is poised for growth, such as advanced manufacturing, value added agriculture, insurance and financial services.

• Energize the Iowa economic development community with strong, committed leadership from the Governor and a focused mission.

Truncation of Branstad’s Ready To Market: IGNITE and INET

Branstad also hopes implement a plan called Iowa Network of Entrepreneurial Transplants to attract Iowans who have left the state in search of better business opportunities. INET will “identify key former Iowans in targeted businesses and industries around the country and the world, and create a network of former Iowans in order to broaden the connections and abilities of his program,” Branstad said.

“We also need to have new leadership there, professional developers that will work with the business community to really help us effectively market and sell Iowa,” Branstad said. “There’s a lot of things I want to do.”