Invest NI was established in 2001 to help provide new jobs
Invest NI, Northern Ireland's economic development agency, created a record number of jobs in 2014, beating targets set by the Stormont Executive.
However, it continued to struggle with a target to increase the exporting performance of local firms.
The agency created 9,410 jobs, up 40% on the figure of 6,775 in 2013.
Jobs promoted - which reflects jobs announced but not yet created - were up 30% to 13,829.
'Phenomenal year'
Invest NI had a target of promoting 25,000 jobs between 2011 and 2015 - it exceeded that figure by almost 50%, reaching 37,277.
Alastair Hamilton, the chief executive of Invest NI, described 2014 as "a phenomenal year".
He said almost all the jobs promoted would ultimately deliver more than £300m of annual salaries to the Northern Ireland economy.
Just over 8,000 of the jobs promoted came from local firms, including major investments from Randox, First Derivatives and Kainos.
Invest NI has had a strong two years, helped by improvements in the US and UK economies.
Targets
Another major factor was companies pushing through projects ahead of the tightening of European rules on grants, which took effect in June 2014.
Invest NI exceeded most of the four-year targets set for it by the Northern Ireland Executive, including increasing investment in research and development.
Invest NI chairman Mark Ennis said the targets had been set when the economy was "in the depths of a recession" and looked "very challenging" at that time.
The target for manufacturing export growth over the four years was 20% but just 4.9% was achieved.
That has been influenced by the weakness in Eurozone markets and, more recently, by the appreciation of sterling against the euro.
The agency is to introduce a new way of measuring exports which should help capture the value of service sector exports that are not included in the current data.
