EU funds 2007-2013 – Malta to invest heavily in research, tourism and training.

Malta will be investing heavily in the coming years in order to boost its economy with a particular emphasis on research, tourism and training. Giving a general look at how Malta is planning to use its EU funds under the European regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Cohesion Fund (CF) until 2013, the Commission said that according to the operational programmes approved by the EU executive, the total budget of the programme is around €857 million.

The Commission said that the European Regional Development Funds amounts to €444 million, while €284 million will be dedicated to the Cohesion Fund, for an overall amount of €728 million. The Commission said that this is approximately 87 per cent of the total EU money invested in Malta under the Cohesion policy for 2007-2013.

Brussels said that Malta was the first member state to complete negotiations with the Commission for the new programming period. ‘The programme will play a key role in achieving the objectives of the Maltese National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) and its convergence. It will do this by both boosting the competitiveness of its productive activities and enhancing the attractiveness of the archipelago in terms of environmental quality, transport facilities and services as well as clean and efficient energy patterns.’

Highlighting some of the expected impact of this investment, the Commission said that Malta is aiming to achieve a percentage increase in RTDI (Research, Technological Development and Innovation) expenditure as a percentage of GDP.

The target is an increase from 0.3 per cent in 2004 to 0.75 in 2013. Another priority will be tourism where Malta is targeting to increase its tourism earnings by one per cent per year over the 2007-2013 financial period. Malta is also aiming an increase in exports of its manufacturing sector from 2.7 per cent in 2007 to 3.2 per cent in 2013 on an annual growth basis.

Addressing a press conference in Brussels on the conclusion of negotiations held with all the 27 member states on how to spend EU funds until 2013, regional policy Commissioner Danuta Hubner said that now it is up to individual member states to choose the right projects to fit the approved general operational projects. In total, the EU is investing a total of €347.4 billion through Cohesion Policy for the 2007-2013 cycle with the new EU member states.