The recently-announced construction of a maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility for Airbus wide-body aircraft at Malta International Airport by Lufthansa Technik, involving an investment of over €55 million and the creation of more than 500 jobs over four to five years is greatly welcomed by the Malta Federation of Industry.

Expansions like this enhance the credibility of Malta in the eyes of foreign investors as these give a clear signal that Malta can position itself as a hub for world-class performance. This is not only a result of the country's geographical position between the European and African continents and an English-speaking workforce in an EU member state, but more so because of the flexibility of its labour force, and flexible work practices and processes.

It is also a result of a company's competitive vision and pricing - an aspect which is under constant pressure in the global arena and a vital element for operations which can never be overlooked in terms of balancing cost effectiveness and productivity.

We are pleased that the Malta-based company has been, and will continue being, a centre of excellence within the Lufthansa Technik group. The federation congratulates the management team at Lufthansa Technik, the government, through the Ministry for Investment, Industry and Information Technology, as well as Maltese Enterprise and the unions, and augurs that they will ensure the project becomes a reality.

Surely new training and development opportunities in aviation maintenance will arise, and these will inevitably require adequately-trained human resources to enable these opportunities to be reached and fully developed. This is another reason for which we would like to congratulate Lufthansa Technik, for working closely with academic institutions, particularly the Malta College for Arts, Science & Technology (Mcast), which is also investing in new courses to meet the growing demand of the industry.

We would like to take this opportunity to also encourage other business operators to strengthen their linkages with the institutes most related to their activities so as to proactively ensure that industry will be provided with an adequate pool of skilled employees in those areas that are mostly in demand.

On this point, we must also appeal to the Ministry of Education to continue in its campaign in raising the awareness of youngsters on the importance of tertiary education and vocational training. It is a sheer pity that, from the annual numbers of secondary school leavers of about 5,000 students, a high percentage of these do not continue pursuing further skills or professions.

In this day and age, when Malta is moving to a knowledge-based, high value-added economy, we must encourage our youngsters to invest in developing their skills and knowledge so as not to be left behind. Unfortunate casualties, like those recently reported in the textiles and other relatively low value-added business activities should be avoided as much as possible and thus also stressing on the importance of life-long learning among our workforce.

Aviation maintenance, like other high value-added business operations, offers more sustainable growth with more and better jobs. We believe that this can be emphasised further so as to motivate youngsters in seriously considering sitting for courses in this line of business and taking this as a long-term career prospect, for, indeed, any business operator aims at retaining high quality skilled personnel, subject to the respective productivity and cost parameters.

Mr Muscat is the director general of the Malta Federation of Industry.