Plan to get more businesses online

Fewer than one in three Maltese businesses offer online support to their customers or use the internet for after-sales services or training of staff, Austin Gatt, Minister for Investment, Industry and Information Technology, said yesterday.

Speaking at Momentum, a yearly IT conference organised by Microsoft, Dr Gatt said there are cultural reasons for this, rather than simply technological ones.

"The fact that more than two-thirds of Maltese businessmen prefer to conduct their affairs with their banks through physical presence in a bank branch rather than over the internet is more due to our cultural habits than to the fact that our business may not have the knowledge of using electronic means," he said.

Dr Gatt said his ministry was consulting the business community on its eBusiness Action Plan.

"The first stream of activities focus on equipping the business community with the tools, processes and services that form the productive foundation of a knowledge-based economy," he said.

"The second stream of activity is concerned with raising awareness with sellers and buyers alike of the availability of doing business electronically. Apart from focused public education campaigns, we are planning to provide training to about 1,000 micro and small enterprises to help them integrate ICTs in their value chain," he added.

He said the third and final stream will provide support to the business sector to overcome existing barriers to growth.

"Our eGovernment programme is now five years old and although not exclusively focused on business matters, the business community confirms that what we have done so far has made their life easier as it is now much simpler and quicker to do business with the government."

However, he said there was much room for improvement here and the government wanted electronic delivery to the "standing medium" between public services and businesses.

There was a plan to set up an online business portal that would serve as a central point for all relevant public services and offer tools and guidelines for planning and running a business, he said.