Strong showing for Malta’s financial services in Global Competitiveness Report

Malta has moved into 11th position in financial market development, according to the World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Index 2010-2011. Key performance indicators for the financial services sector also confirm the sector’s standing as a leading innovator in the Maltese economy.

This ranking is two notches up from the previous year.

The soundness of Maltese banks has been ranked in 10th position (up from 13th). Malta also moved up from 13th to 12th position in the assessment carried out on the regulation of securities exchanges and from 12th to eighth position on the strength of auditing and reporting standards.

This year’s edition of the WEF Index is based on an assessment of 139 countries. According to the report, the Maltese economy has moved into 50th position worldwide, up from 52nd last year. Malta also featured strongly on the positive impact of rules on foreign direct investment (seventh); the quality of the educational system (20th) and country credit rating (28th). The rankings also confirm that the country is a very safe place to conduct business.

The figures for financial services underscore recent performance figures published by the National Statistics Office showing that the financial sector’s gross value added in the first six months of 2010 has increased by 75 per cent over the same period last year.

Malta ranked 30th in health and primary education, 37th in higher education and training, and 29th in technological readiness (and 17th in internet access in school). In business sophistication and innovation it ranked 40th and 48th respectively.

As expected, Malta fared poorly in female participation in the labour force, where it was ranked 119th and in labour market efficiency where it was placed 98th. It also did badly in flexibility of wage determination, coming 86th and in hiring and firing practices, where it was ranked 93rd. Malta did not do well in the burden of government regulation sector - it was ranked 96th, and in quality of roads (113th) and government debt (111th).

According to a business survey published with the Competitiveness Index 2010-2011, the most problematic factors for doing business in Malta are inefficient government bureaucracy (21 per cent), an inadequate supply of infrastructure (11.3 per cent), tax rates (10.3 per cent), an inadequately educated workforce (9.9 per cent), access to financing (8.8 per cent), inflation (8.2 per cent), restrictive labour regulations (7.7 per cent), tax regulations (7.4 per cent), poor work ethic in the national labour force (6.6 per cent), corruption (3.8 per cent) and policy instability (3.1 per cent).