Prudence needed over Smart City

On the face of it, the Smart City project sounds like the best thing that has hit Malta in 20 years. But there are aspects to it which are beginning to dampen one's hopes and make one suspect that somewhere there is a growing element of electioneering in it.

First we had the Prime Minister hinting that something big is in the pipeline. Then as we got closer to the council elections, Austin Gatt gave the details even though the deal is not done. The details try to be too accurate. I cannot imagine how anyone can be so precise in their prediction of creating exactly 5,600 jobs by 2016. Not 5,500 jobs or 5,700 jobs, but 5,600.

Several IT companies have grown from nothing to employing tens of thousands of people and shrunk back to a few thousand or went bust in 10 years. There is no question that if Lm100 million is invested (or $300 million as the Prime Minister now prefers to describe it) it should produce a few thousand jobs. If the project is a success, and global economics are favourable, it may create tens of thousands of jobs. But at this stage we should be prudent and not mislead the public. We are now told that the government may take a five to 10 per cent stake in this project. We know this government favours the service industry. But we had shareholdings in successful service industries and we sold them on the cheap. So why are we buying into this one?

This project has not even started and is beginning to sound like the Qui-Si-Sana project where the government first said there should be a car park and then realised they cannot justify a car park, so they decided to build an entertainment complex too.

Let us hope that this great opportunity for a Smart City in Malta is not compromised in any way for electioneering benefits.