Guz Bonett, Marsalforn
Private vs public interests in shipyards
The editorial on the Shipyards' privatisation (June 11) made interesting reading. It seems that by parcelling up the privatisation of this, over the years, heavily state subsidised entity, the lucrative parts are finding a ready buyer while the cumbersome part with docks and ship repair facility, the largest heavy duty facility on the island, will either go for a song, be auctioned off and scaled down or remain fallow. Anyone following maritime journals will realise that now is the worst time possible to try and privatise a ship repair facility when so many have decreasing order books.
According to my reading of Adam Smith the state's function is to do what the private citizen or corporations will or cannot do for the common good. Thus, seeing that so much of our taxes over decades have been sunk into the ship repair yard, would it make economic and political sense to auction off parts of it and leave the rest out of commission? In too many cases private interests have strong lobbying powers to obtain public assets on the cheap while reinvesting back as little as they can get away with - just look at the deteriorating Fort Chambray in Gozo!
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laurence schembri
Jun 15th 2009, 21:46
At times I just wonder as to why Mr. Martnelli is not ove here running this country, his comments make the present administration look out of all sorts, utterly inefficient.
Joe Mifsud
Jun 15th 2009, 18:44
So who was responsible for the implementation of the privatisation process, were the government had to fork out all that money to make people resign from the shipyards? It seems that nobody in charge of the privatisation have foreseen this situation. At least a lot of taxpayers money could have been saved, and the call for privatisation would have been done before the schemes for retirement were issued. Then if there would have been a good bidder, the government could have trimmed the workforce to the requirements of the interested party. That would have given a clearer picture to the government of what to expect in the privatisation, which would have saved us a lot of money.
J Martinelli
Jun 15th 2009, 14:14
One must put things in the right perspective.
The government had little choice to put up the Shipyards for sale by December 31 when subsidies had to stop.
One option was to let the yards go bankrupt, then the whole package would have gone for a song and dance, anyway.
The other option which the government took, was to separate the different sectors and offer them for sale piece by piece although it was preferred that the whole entity sold as one.
The government had no control over negative world economy developments which, unfortunately, are here to stay for a while yet.
If there are no positive movements regarding the sale of the docking and repair facilities, the government should widen its horizon and perhaps offer the workshops for secondary industries not necessarily related to maritime operations. The possibility of other steel fabrication operations, oil rig Derek construction, wind generation pylons and ancillary components and such could be explored and offered to already established manufacturers elsewhere. Any jobs created there will be new jobs and will attenuate the redundancies elsewhere due to the economic downturn.
In the end, it's a matter of risking by waiting or selling as-is now.