The European Commission published its Winter Report on the performance of each of the 28 member states of the European Union last week. It should not have come as a surprise to anyone that the report on Malta was a positive one. In fact opinion polls have consistently shown that the economy does not feature as a major concern for the Maltese.

Even so in such circumstances it is always important to warn that we should never take anything for granted and neither should we believe that this economic performance is the result of good luck. I have often made reference in past contributions that, although we have had blips over the years, the economy has not been through a severe recession with high unsustainable unemployment since the first half of the 1980s.

In the meantime, the Maltese economy has withstood the challenge of significant companies closing down, restructuring, a difficult international environment, etc.

So what we have today is something we have all worked for and of which we should be proud, although not haughty.

We need to have a pro-business economic environment and not a pro-businessman environment. We need to ensure that the benefits of this economic growth are enjoyed by all society and not by the few

An important contributor to this economic growth have been investment projects, many of which were made possible only thanks to EU funding. We should not forget that we have had a significant injection of funds from the EU that had its positive impact.

In fact the introductory paragraph to the Malta Report does state that, “Real GDP growth peaked in 2015 on the back of strong investment and supported by private consumption”.

A significant element of that strong investment was the infrastructural projects funded by the EU. On the back of this positive performance the fiscal deficit has been reduced. We also need to keep in mind the low interest regime of the last years, which has significantly reduced the cost of borrowing for government.

We should also keep in mind the tax income earned from the international business that local private corporate services firms keep generating. A third element contributed to the reduction of the fiscal deficit has been taxes earned from expatriates working here, also thanks to a very tight labour market.

The data presented with the EU report shows that there are a couple of areas that require attention.

Wages and salaries per capita and unit labour costs will have increased every year between 2013 and 2017. Real unit labour costs (that is after accounting for inflation and taking into account the hours worked) will have decreased every year during this five-year period. This raises questions as to whether the economic growth we are experiencing is limited to certain sectors of the economy only.

Another point is inflation, which is expected to start moving the two per cent level. Such a level is not considered as damaging to the economy.

However, we still need to make sure that businesses operating in Malta do not lose their competitive advantage.

If our rate of inflation is significantly higher than that of competitor countries, the risk of losing competitiveness is there.

In both areas, I would much rather be facing such a challenge than the challenge faced by a number of other EU member states in the area of employment. So overall it is a case of “steady as she goes”.

In such a scenario there are two points that need to be emphasised. We need to be careful that in our economy the primacy of man is maintained.

Man cannot be treated like the other resources that contribute to the creation of wealth. The human person cannot be put in a subordinate position to the wealth he creates.

The second point is the need to maintain the common good in focus.

We need to have a pro-business economic environment and not a pro-businessman environment. We need to ensure that the benefits of this economic growth are enjoyed by all society and not by the few.

We also need to ensure that in the current environment, taxes due are paid in full. Tax evasion, which unfortunately has remained rampant in Malta, needs to be tackled head on.

Unless we assert the primacy of human person and the centrality of the common good in our economy, our current economic performance will not be sustainable.