Vassallo underlines government commitment to SMEs

It was government policy to improve services for small businesses and also to change the way society looked upon this sector, Parliamentary Secretary Edwin Vassallo said in Parliament on Wednesday.

He was opening a three-day debate on the policies and plans of his ministry for the coming year.

He said the theme for this year's activities was Open for Business.

The secretariat's purpose, and that of the government, he said, was to better support small businesses and promote their growth. Significant progress had been achieved in the past few years.

The working environment of industrial parks had been greatly improved, with new infrastructural services and newly-surfaced roads. Work had also been started on the sites for new parks.

There was also progress in raising the level of coordination among public institutions dealing with this sector.

The activities of the secretariat, he said, were carried out in the context of the European Charter for Small Businesses, one of whose purposes was to ensure there was ongoing dialogue between the government and the sector.

Mr Vassallo said that over the coming months the government would continue to stress the importance of micro-enterprises so as to eliminate the cold shoulder to small businesses which unfortunately existed in some areas.

The importance of this sector to the economy could be seen from the fact that according to the NSO's Business Register for 2004, there were 44,297 workers employed with micro-enterprises with each such enterprise employing not more than nine workers.

Small enterprises, those having 10 to 49 workers, employed 24,216 workers and medium-sized enterprises, having 50 to 249 workers, employed 29,046.

It was calculated that 96 per cent of commercial activity in Malta was created by micro-enterprises.

That was why it was important to continue developing an entrepreneurial policy in the country.

While the opposition presented a picture of doom and gloom, this was not the case. The number of gainfully occupied had continued to increase and unemployment had dropped, despite the dismissals by some large firms. This was because of the creation of a variety of jobs by small businesses, making up for the losses by the manufacturing sector.

Mr Vassallo said a central element of the government's policies for SMEs was the promotion of an entrepreneurial mentality, something which had now started being done in schools from primary classes all the way to Mcast and the University. The ETC too was holding modules on entrepreneurship.

The government was also facilitating procedures for business start-ups and streamlining procedures to reduce costs and time spent on compliance.

Several schemes had also been introduced to ease access to finance and improve training, including participation in EU programmes.

Two best practice models had been selected from Malta by the EU to share with the other member states. These were the project Kickstart, the aims of which were to keep businesses informed of new government initiatives and to promote e-commerce, and the Entrepreneurial Forum through which discussions on the European Charter for SMEs and the development of a policy for the self-employed was discussed.

Mr Vassallo said the government, notably through the parliamentary secretariat within the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs, was also working on updates to the Commercial Code.