Improve chief executive Jack Matthews (pictured) said he was ‘concerned' by what he described as the emphasis on league tables of sectors ranked in priority order of economic importance.
The audit ranks 27 sectors on economic factors such as productivity, growth and employment at present and in the future, with food and drink manufacturing coming 20th and 22nd respectively.
The report also rated sectors according to their present skills needs, with food and drink ranked seventh, and likely replacement demand for jobs in the future, in which food and drink comes 19th.
Matthews said: "I cannot understand this fascination with turning everything into a league table. We've had them in education, and now it seems we have them in workplace skills too. I always thought the ambition of raising the bar on skills in the workplace was universal across all sectors of industry and commerce, not about prioritising one over the other. This sends out completely the wrong message. It says to employers in the food and drink industry that the Government does not rate you and, as a consequence, does not mind if, like a number of well-known brands, you move overseas.
"I can't imagine employers, workers, trade organisations and stakeholders will be very pleased reading that their industry is rated in the bottom five sectors in terms of importance to the economy and that, despite having acknowledged skills needs, priorities should lie elsewhere. Where is the sense of reality?"
Matthews claims the audit's use of a ranking system "massively oversimplified" the issues and risked diverting attention away from the fundamental goal of developing a robust, successful economy based on individuals' talents and ambitions.
He added: "The key messages are all there in summary - we need more higher and intermediate skills in managerial, professional and technical roles to help businesses perform more efficiently, we need to match the supply of skills to the changing demands of the workplace, and we need to stimulate demand for better paid, higher-skilled job roles and ensure we are using the talent we have most effectively.
"There is a risk of those messages being lost. Anyone glancing at this audit would conclude all we need for future success is to invest in skills for financial and business services, education and healthcare, and retail. The economy is not going to thrive on better trained bankers, business consultants and shop assistants alone. We've just come through a recession where serious alarm bells were sounded about the UK's reliance on business services and our lack of a production base, so instead of portraying our established manufacturing base as an insignificant afterthought, why are we not talking about ways we can use and develop the talents of our workforce to help re-ignite our industrial-based economy?"
