Malta ranks last

Malta will have to work very hard to catch up with the European Union average when it comes to innovation.

A report issued yesterday measuring the progress being made by member states shows Malta ranks last and needs more than 50 years to catch up with the of the EU average.

The European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS) is the instrument developed by the European Commission, under the Lisbon Strategy, to evaluate and compare the innovation performance of member states.

The analysis compares member states on the transformation of innovation assets such as education and investment in innovation, into innovation return, such as firm turnover coming from new products, employment in high tech sectors, patents and other innovation measures.

Malta features at the bottom of the table, with Bulgaria, which still has to join the EU, ranking better.

Commenting on Malta's results, the Commission remar-ked that the island's best performance is in innovation and entrepreneurship and in applications, two strands out of the five analysed.

"The latter is largely due to high tech exports, which is an anomaly due to one firm within a very small economy.

Business research and development is close to non-existent and public research and development is only 28 per cent of the EU average."

The Commission said good performance for innovation and entrepreneurship results from high total innovation expenditures, most likely capital investment.

"As the smallest economy in the EU, Malta's innovation performance can depend on only one or two firms. This probably explains good performance on innovation expenditures, high technology exports, and ICT expenditures."