Investment in IT

The heading of the item carried by The Times regarding the recent press release issued by the Malta Labour Party on the SmartCity@Malta project - Labour Is Lukewarm To IT Investment - could give the impression that Labour in principle has its doubts about the importance of investment in the IT sector.

While the Nationalist Party never had the courage to praise any news of FDI in Malta under a Labour government - ST Microelectronics included - in our media release we made it clear that Labour will support any IT related investment that turns out to be serious and that is conducive to new and productive employment. This contrasts with attempts made under a Fenech Adami government in the 1980s when German export credit guarantee covered companies were asked to reconsider their Malta based operations and transactions.

At no stage did we try and cast any doubts on the foreign investors involved. We merely highlighted problem areas that arose when they came to set up shop in India.

It is not true that we found out about the Malta project as a result of a half-hour internet search because we were aware of Internet City's interest in Malta since September of last year, when the Gulf News had reported that Internet City was drawing up a strategy for international IT clusters both in Dubai and abroad, so much so that "at least three DIC (Dubai Internet City) clones were being envisaged - two in India and one in Malta while Pakistan and Iran were also being considered".

There was nothing negative in our reaction simply because we claimed that the timing of the announcement of the project coincided with the local elections while that of the actual start-up of Phase One is meant to coincide with the statutory general election year. So much was indirectly admitted by the minister himself on local news media.

I stand by my statement and feel that, contrary to what was implied by the minister, I owe no apologies for what I have stated as I had no ulterior motives and in no way did I try to scare off investors who could provide jobs to the Maltese. The full unedited version of my media release can be seen on the recently revamped user-friendly MLP website.