The Budget reflected the positive developments in the Maltese economy, the Malta Employers Association said.

It said it agreed with the incentives for employees opting to continue working beyond retirement age to enhance their pensions, as long as it was still at the employers’ discretion to decide whether to retain such workers after they reached retirement age.

It said the measure to make contracts of employment templates available online had to be studied and evaluated and current labour legislation already had the necessary safeguards to ensure that employees were given a contract of employment, normally drafted by the employer.

It said that one of the challenges facing Malta was to deal with the pressures of rapid growth, such as labour shortages, environmental constraints, and a stress on infrastructure.

Incentives for SMEs should be more defined and accessible and the public sector needed to be more efficient and streamlined to assist the private sector in continuing to generate economic expansion, it said.