International ratings agency Moody’s were right to classify Malta’s outlook as negative, Labour economic development spokesman Charles Mangion has said.

Growth forecasts for next year had been revised downwards, from 2.6 per cent to 2.2 per cent, while in real terms productive investment in the first nine months of 2011 was 27 per cent lower than that in 2010.

“These figures indicate a need to reassess the main factors nibbling at Malta’s competitiveness,” Dr Mangion said.

Businesses were forking out money from their own pockets to pay for administrative inefficiencies, with some of Europe’s highest electricity tariffs and excessive bureaucracy weighing down productivity.

Dr Mangion called for economic policy to focus more on the so-called “green economy” as well as on sectors with significant growth potential such as the maritime industry.

This focus, Dr Mangion added, needed to be coupled with a reduction in administrative costs and needless bureaucratic delays “through the implementation of measures promised several times by Gonzi-led governments”.