Short on knowledge

If Mr Leo Brincat, Labour's chief spokesman on the economy and finance, honestly believes that "tourism fared badly in 2001 because of the removal of the Tour Operator Support Scheme (Toss) offered to British tour operators to encourage them to send visitors to Malta" (June 15), then it is patently clear that the Labour Party urgently needs a crash course update on recent developments within the industry, some sound, basic, and better founded economic and financial advice, and perhaps, why not, a shuffling around of portfolios among its shadows.

Toss was introduced in 1995 following the removal of the FBR (forward buying rate) scheme. The mechanism was designed to hedge UK and Irish tour operators' exposure against any short- to medium-term strengthening of the Malta lira. Toss retained the old FBR scheme's subsidy element and introduced other forms of support for UK and Irish tour operators.

As from November 2000, after giving sufficient notice to UK and Irish tour operators, Toss's subsidy element was discontinued.

All other Toss programmes were retained and, as per the PN's 1998 electoral manifesto, gradually extended to operators in other source markets.

This strategic change of tack stopped the unsustainable haemorrhage, and, as events confirmed, an ineffective flow of millions of liri mainly into UK operators' pockets.

Eventual savings were redeployed on more tactically focused Toss programmes as well as on stronger, more frequent marketing and promotional campaigns.

Therefore, since MTA still partners UK and Irish tour operators, and their continental counterparts, in agreed initiatives, it is wrong to say, as Mr Brincat erroneously concludes, that the Toss scheme has been removed.

But Mr Brincat's biggest clanger relates to his pinning the loss of 35,000 visitors and Lm7.5 million in income from tourism on the removal of Toss. He omits to mention that travel demand was slack during 2001.

He fails to recall that FTI, which had accounted for 50 per cent of German visitors, dropped destinations and slashed half its Malta programme to get back into the black.

He is totally amnesiac that, on September 11 of that year, tourism's wheel stopped spinning and only began to regain some slow momentum towards the end of the first quarter of 2002.

What, however, is even more surprising, from someone who ad nauseam qualifies his writings by reminding all and sundry that he is Labour's chief spokesman on the economy and finance, is that, despite the September 11 atrocities, the withdrawal in November 2000 of the Toss subsidy element, and a weaker travel demand throughout 2001, Dr Brincat is yet to realise that the UK and Irish markets increased by five per cent and 10 per cent respectively in a year when the UK outgoing market slumped by six per cent.

I am certain that Mr Brincat would be delighted to learn, once he apparently neglects reference to published data, that moreover, in 2001, these markets posted a substantial increase in the number of guest nights that UK and Irish visitors spent in Malta, contributing to an increased length of stay and, more importantly, to the near absorption of the September 11 shock on the job market.

Mr Brincat's ill-informed remarks reveal that he is sadly short on knowledge and expose the shallowness of Labour's purported update on the economy and finance.