Prime Minister Joseph Muscat played down the fact that the Chinese company carrying out a feasibility study on a bridge to Gozo was blacklisted by the World Bank.

“When the Chinese Government offers its biggest company to carry out a feasibility study for free and you also have another feasibility study being carried out... I think we had to accept all these things,” Dr Muscat said. Asked whether the Government carried out a basic due diligence exercise to make sure the company was not blacklisted, Dr Muscat said such an assessment must be carried out with the “end beneficial owner”.

“The end beneficial owner is the Chinese Government. We know its global standing and we feel we should work with it,” he said, pointing out that the Government was having “wide-ranging” discussions with China on other possible projects.

Pressed to give more details about these discussions, Dr Muscat said it was not the Government’s style to announce projects before they materialised.

Dr Muscat was speaking to the press after a visit to Nexia BT, an audit and consultancy firm employing 60 people, which has moved into new and bigger offices in San Ġwann.

He spoke about the importance of such businesses in providing services to aviation companies. He said one of the strengths of Malta was that operators could propose legislative changes relatively easily.

“In other countries the message sometimes takes long to percolate to the legislator because of the high levels of bureaucracy,” he said, pointing out that, here, one could make immediate and direct contact with the regulator.