Malta not having significant results in innovation

Malta is not achieving any significant results in innovation, considered to be one of the most important pillars of a modern economy.

According to the sixth edition of the European Innovation Scoreboard, published by the EU in Brussels, Malta ranks among "trailing" countries with a "well below EU average performance".

The European Innovation Scoreboard for last year measures the innovation performance of a country's economy based on a wide range of indicators, from education to expenditure in information and communication technologies, investment in research and the development or the number of patents.

Malta's weak status stems from poor performance in a number of sectors particularly investment in research and development.

The report states that, overall, Malta's innovation performance is below EU average.

"Of the nine indicators available for 2005, Malta's innovation performance is comparable to the EU 25 average only in the group of Applications - which measures the performance expressed in terms of labour and business activities and their value added in innovative sectors.

"For the other groups the performance is weaker," the report says.

The weakest points score are in relation to patents and community designs followed by business research expenditure.

The report, however, depicts an optimistic picture for the coming years stating that the trend is quite positive.

"The trend for the country has been positive for a number of indicators, in particular medium-high tech manufacturing research and development, organisational innovation, and sales of new to market and new to firm products".

But the report underscores the low levels of graduates in science and electronics and workers with tertiary education.

"The level of business R&D expenditure is very low, but the trend is very positive over time, expected to increase from 0.07 per cent of GDP to 0.45 per cent of GDP in the coming three years."

Overall, the EU innovation scoreboard shows Nordic countries and Switzerland continuing to be innovation leaders worldwide, with many of the new member states steadily catching up with the EU average.

At the same time the EU is also closing the innovation gap with the US and Japan.

Apart from the 27 EU countries, the scoreboard measured the performance of Croatia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the US and Japan.