Maltese financial services industry 'set to grow faster'

Malta needs to "trumpet its good qualities" and not hide its potential as a financial destination, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Alderman Michael Savory, said yesterday.

Mr Savory said one of the reasons he was visiting Malta was to examine the country's financial services, an industry he said was growing prosperously. He expressed his belief that this would grow much more rapidly in the future.

"Financial services in Malta will become more and more important in the next few years," he said. Mr Savory explained that in Edinburgh and Glasgow alone there were 100,000 people engaged in financial services while in Malta the figure stood at about 6,000.

The Lord Mayor said he discussed the areas of regulation with the Malta Financial Services Authority and said regulation in Malta was very high. Business people in the UK looked at Malta as a very well educated, experienced and regulated financial industry with very high standards.

"I think this message needs to be made more widely known. If Malta has any fault it is that it is not promoting these skills widely enough with the European Union and elsewhere," he said.

He said that as a new EU member Malta was an important country which was highly regarded as a trading company and which had a "deep-rooted" association with the UK.

"The necessity is to undertake new business opportunities in which we use our intelligence," he said, adding that the Maltese people's ability to speak different languages needed to be exploited.

Another reason for Mr Savory's visit to Malta was to widen the awareness of public-private partnerships. He said this was being exercised in the UK.

The Lord Mayor announced that preliminary negotiations had started with the MFSA to invite two people from the regulation sector to obtain experience in the City of London.

Mr Savory arrived on Tuesday after a visit to Libya and will now be visiting Tunisia. He said that while in Libya he realised there were close relations with Malta. Libya had been isolated for a long time and the Maltese businessmen could help Libya develop trade links with the United Kingdom. In Tunisia he will be meeting with the Africa Development Bank.

British High Commissioner Vincent Fean said the High Commission was attempting to facilitate contacts between Maltese and British ministers.

The Lord Mayor yesterday addressed a seminar on public private partnerships at the Corinthia Palace Hotel, in Attard.

The seminar was also addressed by Parliamentary Secretary Tonio Fenech, who spoke of the role of public private partnerships in Malta and of the government's policy to encourage more such initiatives.