On Sunday Malta celebrates the 50th anniversary since independence. At the time I was too young to appreciate fully what this meant for our economy.

Ffty years on, one feels tangible evidence of the economic progress that our country has achieved since 1964.

In effect, the high level of economic interdependence among nations ensures that no country is economically independent. Even those countries that have extensive natural resources rely on international trade to meet all their requirements. So the notion that independence should be equated with economic independence is, to say the least, idiotic.

However, independence does bring with it a significant change from the economic perspective. As a country we could start shaping our own economic policies. When Malta was still a colony, it had to bow to the whims of the country that was colonising it. Even though it had a measure of self-government at various times between 1921 and 1964, it could not really implement its own economic vision and strategy.

The great thing about independence is that it posed a challenge to us all as individuals and as a nation to develop our economy

Since 1964 we have done this and I would say with a great deal of success and, admittedly, some failures. At that time, we were making our first steps in attracting foreign direct investment to kick-start our manufacturing sector. Since then, we have moved up the value chain in terms of what our manufacturing sector produces.

Over the years, we have moved from low-cost clothing to higher value-added clothing; specialised manufacturing of plastic products, pharmaceutical products, electronic devices and engineering services such as aircraft maintenance.

It is worth noting that most of the foreign-owned manufacturing products and services produced in Malta are world leaders.

In terms of foreign direct investment we have moved on from focusing simply on manufacturing and we are now attracting investment is a number of services sectors. It is easy to fall into the trap of making reference only to the financial services sector when one refers to services. We ignore the investment is ICT, transportation and logistics, tourism, etc.

While mentioning tourism, one also needs to note that this economic activity was still in its infancy in 1964.

Since then, the sector has become one of the key pillars of our economy.

Since 50 years ago, we have had one really big downturn in tourism, in the first half of the 1980s.

Up to that time, the sector experienced significant growth and diversification in terms of both product and markets.

Since then the sector has shown sustained growth, with further diversification. Again, there have been years when we had a slowdown in that growth, but the overall trend shows a positive upward movement.

Underpinning this economic growth has been the development in our human resources. We may complain about our education system and each of us probably has one’s own ideas on how to improve it.

However, there is no doubt that the platform of skills of the Maltese workforce is significantly higher than it was 50 years ago.

There is one interesting anecdote that is worth remembering. At the time when Malta achieved its independence, Singapore (that had also achieved independence in the early 1960s) claimed that it wanted to become the Malta of the Far East.

In actual fact, Singapore achieved much more than that. However, I also believe that today Malta is the envy of a number of countries in Europe.

In seeking to establish in tangible terms what our economic progress since independence has meant, one can mention two things.

The first is our social welfare system. Although political will is required to establish, develop and maintain a social welfare system, it is the economy that makes it sustainable.

Our economic growth, with the resulting tax revenues that it generates, has ensured that we could have a welfare system that can be sustained.

The second tangible proof of our economic progress is that we have now enjoyed nearly three decades of consistent growth. There have been some years when growth slowed down.

However, since the late 1980s, we have not really experienced a recession of the type that has been experienced by other countries.

I am not just referring to the situation in Greece or Spain or Ireland; as there have been other countries like Sweden and Iceland that have experienced a collapse of their economy.

The great thing about independence is that it posed a challenge to us all as individuals and as a nation to develop our economy as we have known best.

Fifty years on, the record shows that we have made it and we have made it our way.