WALES is gaining a reputation as a country “where major projects go to die”, Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price has claimed.

Mr Price was speaking after work on a £13 billion nuclear plant in Anglesey was put on hold by Japanese multi-national Hitachi last week.

Speaking in the Assembly, the Plaid leader said this, as well as the scrapping of the Circuit of Wales in 2017 and the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon last year, painted a dismal picture of Wales as a destination for major developments.

Addressing first minister Mark Drakeford, Mr Price said: "Wales has a reputation, doesn't it, as the country where major projects go to die?

"There’s a seeming inability to actually bring forward major transformational projects.

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"We heard the language of transformation again from the economic minister, but where is the implementation of that? We had the fiasco of the Circuit of Wales, but that’s just one example over many, many years."

He added the Welsh Government should develop its own major projects rather than relying on the UK Government or other organisations.

The decision to scrap the Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon was made the UK Government, while the Wylfa Newydd nuclear plant is under the control of Hitachi. Scrapping the Circuit of Wales in Ebbw Vale was the decision of the Welsh Government.

Mr Price said: "Isn’t part of the problem, in relation to the three specific projects that I referred to, in part or in totality, that we are often relying on decisions made by others?

"If you like, we put our eggs in someone else’s basket, and so our economic strategy is being constantly driven by forces from outside Wales.

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"I know your own view is that the ultimate answer to Wales’s problems is the election of a different government at Westminster, but that isn’t what devolution was meant to be about.

"So, when are we going to see an autonomous, ambitious, homegrown economic strategy that isn’t dependent on what others decide for us, but is built instead around what we are determined to do for ourselves?"

But Mr Drakeford branded Mr Price's comments "nonsensical".

"It’s nonsensical in every part of Wales, where people will see the investments that we are making in public facilities, in transport infrastructure, in a £5 billion rail franchise, in a new convention centre that will bring activity to Wales from other parts of the United Kingdom," he said.

He added: "I take a different view to him - I think we do far better in Wales than he ever seems willing to recognise, and I don’t believe for a moment that his ambitions to cut Wales off from the rest of the United Kingdom and make us, in his terms, ‘autonomous’ would in any way help us to create the sort of future for our country that we would like to see."