Editorial

Labour leader Alfred Sant may well rue the moment he trotted to the offices of the Federation of Industry the other day to discuss the party's document on manufacturing industry. He must have surely not been pleased with the reaction. Without mincing words, the federation told him that it had expected the party's plan to be more forward-looking.

Projecting itself as the champion of the sector, Labour has been accusing the government all along that it has not been showing enough confidence in the future of manufacturing industry. It has argued that the drive that had propelled industry forward in the past has been lost, investment has dried up and exports are down - stagnated is the word often used. Most of the times the party gives the impression that it holds the key to the renewal of manufacturing industry.

Now, Labour has suddenly found out from the people who know best in industry that the party's thinking of what should be done to help industry move ahead is not entirely in line with the federation's expectations. Labour's reaction, at least as communicated to the federation by the party's leader, is that the FOI has a different approach, even though both shared the common goal of empowering industry. Labour's idea, it seems, is to involve people with a proven track record in industry in the decision-making process. But is there any disagreement over this?

The federation appears to be more to the point about what needs to be done than Labour. It expected Labour's plan to have a clear and tangible long-term strategy (an over-worked word for plan) to address issues like human resources supply, a culture for innovation and niche-hunting, industry-academia links and incentives to attract foreign direct investment.

Labour's document highlighted the need for specialisation and for niche manufacturing but in the federation's view it does not identify the mechanisms to reach the objectives. The federation also urges the party to add to its document plans on how to tackle the negative performance in the Lisbon Agenda indicators or in the competitiveness index as published by the World Economic Forum.

In the glut of reports that are being issued today from every imaginable body, it is not difficult to lose sight of where the country stands in terms of the Lisbon Agenda. For the second year running, the report measuring each EU member country's progress in meeting Lisbon Agenda targets places Malta last, behind Bulgaria and Romania, which are not even EU members yet. Getting Malta out of that placing should be one of the country's overriding priorities.

Efforts aimed at doing this presupposes that the country's forces, which should, of course, include also the trade unions, are in agreement on what should be done first. Why should it be all that difficult for such forces to reach a common stand on ways and means of promoting manufacturing industry?

As it happens, the federation itself appears to have understood this well as it is spearheading a consultation process aimed at leading to an integrated industrial policy document.

Its president, Adrian Bajada, could not have put it better when he said at the meeting with the MLP that Malta needed one industrial vision, free of any partisan positioning, which only serves to create unnecessary waste of time and energy for all.

All the country's forces having an interest in the sector should join hands and produce exactly this. Is the MLP prepared to join in? It should if it really has the industry's sector at heart.