Malta competitiveness ranking unchanged
Malta has remained anchored at 52 in the global competitiveness rankings issued by the World Economic Forum.
The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010, just published, profiles 133 economies across the globe.
Switzerland tops the overall ranking while the United States falls one place to second, with weakening in its financial markets and macroeconomic stability. Singapore, Sweden and Denmark round out the top five. Finland, Germany and the Netherlands following suit. The United Kingdom, while remaining very competitive, has continued its fall from last year, moving down one more place this year to 13th, mainly attributable to continuing weakening of its financial markets.
The rankings are calculated from publicly available data and an Executive Opinion Survey.
The latest rankings show that the EU countries behind Malta are Lithuania, at 53, having slipped from 44 last year, Hungary on 58 (62 last year), Romania on 64 (68) Greece on 71 (67) and Bulgaria 76 (unchanged). Italy is just four places above Malta.
The most problematic factors for doing business in Malta are seen as being inefficient government bureacracy, tax rates, access to financing, an inadequately educated workforce, an inadequate infrastructure and restrictive labour regulations.
The detailed list of advantages and disadvantages features, among the disadvantages, the burden of government regulation, the quality of the roads, the quality of electricity supply, the national savings rate, government debt, research and training services, the degree of customer orientation, flexibility of wage determination, hiring and firing practices, pay and productivity, female participation in the labour force and the small size of the domestic market.
The advantages far outweigh the negatives and include property and shareholder rights, intellectual property protection, the independent judiciary, the low crime rate, the quality of the port and airport infrastructure, health services and lack of trade barriers.
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MSciberras
Sep 8th 2009, 17:59
This finding should be taken with a huge pinch of salt and as with so many inetrnational studies is not not correctly sourcing its data. Italy more competitive than Malta? Unfortunately part of the fault for this is our under-resourced NSO which is failing to issue the right statistics at the right time. Inernational organisations will not waste on compiling their own data when it comes to a country as small as Malta. Labour regulations in Malta are far more liberal than most EU states and even gov red tape is not as bad as we make it. You can open a company in a few days in Malta. The real brakes on competitivenes in malta are labour shortages in key fields, our geographical location and size, a too heavy reliance on bank finance for capital and a justice system that is too slow.
S. Calleja
Sep 8th 2009, 14:46
@ Alex Right
I too was questioning myself about that. "The advantages far outweigh the negatives". Just by reading the above article, it doesn't like look that at all. The whole list is available here http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm
From EU countries, Malta is almost last, with only Lithuania, Romania, Greece and Bulgaria ranking lower. Then it's African, Asian and South American countries mostly. It's nothing to be proud of, when you have countries like Cyprus ranking 34, Iceland ranking 26 (with all the economic problems they had), Luxembourg 21 and Singapore third. Even countries like Chile, Brunei Darussalam, Estonia, Thailand, Barbados, India and Azerbaijan ranked better, for all that it may imply.
"The advantages far outweigh the negatives". I think not. Keep up your attitude of denial, dear Malta, and you will sink further.
N.Grima
Sep 8th 2009, 14:20
"The most problematic factors for doing business in Malta are seen as being inefficient government bureacracy, tax rates, access to financing, an inadequately educated workforce, an inadequate infrastructure and restrictive labour regulations."
The person who came up with these criticisms has no idea AT ALL about Malta as a business location. Reminds me of the catastrophe created by ratings firms by using inexperienced staff which never left their desks... We have very short bill-to-law times (just consider how the MT-US DTA has still not been ratified by Congress), an extremely low effective tax rate of 5%, access to EU financing due to passporting rights, a highly skilled services-oriented workforce including some amazing engineers, lawyers, managers and IT people (just have a look a Uni projects and the one-man-show software companies around), one of the cheapest and fastest-developing broadband networks in Europe, and extremely stable employment laws.
Alex Right
Sep 8th 2009, 13:40
Where does this come from "The advantages far outweigh the negatives ", this is the most important thinng for any company: Tax, educated workforce, financing, labour cost, hiring/firing etc. Malta has a massive problem, and the kind of company it attracts today is easy come easy go that uses loopholes in the taxsystem, it changes and they will leave at once.
The gaming companys and the Financial instituations dont care about anything else than money in the bank, with changes that come 2010 in the taxsystem, Malta will have to see an massive loss of jobs. I am sure that a lot of gaming companies currantly look at Alderney, lets see how that work out for Malta.