MLP's vision on SMEs, co-operatives, agriculture and fisheries

The Malta Labour Party yesterday launched three vision statements as part of a series of such documents that will form the basis of Labour's electoral programme. The documents deal with SMEs, co-operatives and agriculture and fisheries.

Labour leader Alfred Sant said the documents were the result of both internal and external consultation with stakeholders after they were drawn up within the party.

With regard to the self-employed, Dr Sant said the party was committing itself to making available more sites for SMEs and to come to an arrangement to upgrade the present industrial estates which house SMEs, which, he said, were often in squalid conditions.

A Labour government, he said, would be committed seriously to the setting up of a venture capital fund and to ensure that SMEs could have easy access to it. He also reiterated the party's pledge to analyse the present tax regime and "prune it", as he put it, to alleviate the sector from unnecessary burdens.

Dr Sant said Labour would be introducing sick leave and pregnancy leave conditions for self-employed women.

As for the co-operatives sector, which, Dr Sant pointed out, was significantly under-recognised, Labour would help market the concept of co-operatives better and also have it introduced as part of the current educational programme, Scoops.

According to statistics reported in Labour's vision statement, the sector is likely to represent some five per cent of GDP, employing about 4,000.

On this point Dr Sant said the sector merited sector-specific statistics, a practice that was not being carried out at the moment.

The co-operatives sector is reported under the SMEs data, something that Dr Sant said was not ideal for the development of a better understanding of co-operatives.

On agriculture and fisheries, he said the sector also needed help with its marketing. The party would be emphasising the role of agro-tourism as well as a new, speedier mechanism of payment for farmers.

When asked about the rise of prices of vegetables despite the fact that farmers do not seem to be pocketing more profits from their labour, Dr Sant said the hikes in prices are an effect of the EU's common agricultural policy (CAP), which Labour had predicted.

He stressed that farmers needed help to set up a strong producers' organisation, which is so far not successfully operative.