Malta must focus its resources on those productive and economic sectors that promised to offer the best possible opportunities, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, Anton Borg, said.
“As a small and resource-hungry nation, Malta cannot afford to position itself as ‘everything’ to ‘everybody’. On the contrary, Malta, and its SMEs, must focus its resources towards those productive and economic sectors that will optimally leverage opportunities – existing, emerging and new. In this regard, we must ensure agility through smallness: Malta’s smallness should result in an enabling environment that allows for immediate policy action to: leverage opportunities, counter threats, and provide for a pro-business climate that gives Malta an advantage over others,” he told the Commonwealth Business Forum last week.
SMEs represent 99.8 per cent of all registered business units in Malta and are responsible for 78 per cent of all private sector employment. They generate €2 billion worth of value added every year, equivalent to 73 per cent of the country’s total value added.
In the interest of strengthening the platform for SMEs to drive growth, Mr Borg noted, the Chamber’s vision was for a “focused and diversified economy, which is underpinned by a high quality, dynamic, productive and innovative private sector”. Malta must ultimately position itself as a global hub for business and investment leading to increased prosperity. In the successful economy the Chamber envisage’s, the public and private sectors would continuously complement each other.
Mr Borg laid stress on quality. “We are calling for a concerted effort from the part of all social partners to inculcate a culture where the current ‘good enough’ attitude is replaced by ‘nothing but the best’ – whether this relates to the products that are manufactured in Malta, to the professional services provided to simple courtesy and good manners towards tourists who visit our shores.”
Referring to innovation, Mr Borg said this was “a strong ingredient of competitiveness and we must embrace it and encourage it”.
The Chamber wanted to see Malta position itself as a global hub for business and investment leading to increased prosperity.
The prevailing situation in markets Malta chose to venture in could equally pose a limiting barrier for economic growth. The growth registered in the recent past came mainly through the penetration of markets in Europe and North Africa, markets that, for different reasons, had become very unstable. Mr Borg noted that, by 2050, none of the European member states are projected to be among the world’s largest economies. Malta, therefore, had to choose very diligently.
“We need not seek new partnerships elsewhere. We must rather seek to exploit a strong but latent organisation which we already have and which is the Commonwealth… We must exploit our membership of the Commonwealth as a platform of evolving economic trends where business opportunities constantly arise and which we need to make each other aware of at a frequency that is equally constant,” he said.