A Malta Business Bureau delegation has exchanged views with Nationalist Party officials on Europe 2020 targets.
An MBB delegation led by president George Vella met with with PN deputy leader Simon Busuttil, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech and PN secretary general Paul Borg Olivier in view of Saturday’s election.
The MBB recommendations, presented in a policy paper entitled Delivering the Europe 2020 Strategy in Malta, focus on a number of measures aimed at enhancing Malta’s competitiveness, employment levels, and environmental resource management, within the context of the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs.
An MBB spokesman said the successful implementation of the Europe 2020 Strategy in Malta would contribute to a significant improvement in the competitiveness of the local economy. To ensure the best possible results, it is imperative that the incoming administration commits to step up its efforts towards the timely achievement of these targets.
During the meeting between the PN officials and the MBB delegation there was an exchange of views on employment and entrepreneurship policy, the creation of a national clusters policy, and increasing renewable energy usage.
Early school leavers in Malta amount to 33.5 per cent as of 2011, much higher than the Europe 2020 set national target of 29 per cent. The European Commission has already cautioned Malta that no notable progress has been made towards reaching this target. In order to help achieve this target, Mr Vella suggested that the number of early school leavers could be curbed by exposing students to entrepreneurship opportunities via company visits and business exposure programmes whereby they are shown how they could venture into an entrepreneurial career.
Such an initiative will also give business the opportunity to be better linked with education institutions, allowing curricula development to be better tuned to current and prospective labour market needs.
“This will therefore push for the reduction of skills-mismatches, particularly in pharmaceuticals and research and development based industries,” explained Mr Vella.
With regards to renewable energy, the Renewable Energy Directive requires member states to invest in renewable energy sources (RES), forming part of the EU-wide drive for increased environmental sustainability under the Europe 2020 targets. Malta has set a target that renewable energy sources will produce at least 10 per cent of the total national energy requirements by 2020.
The MBB believes that progress remains unsatisfactory due to the small number and scale of projects initiated. Local RES policy needs to be channelled into tangible and effective projects. This would involve implementation on micro and macro wind energy projects, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal projects, as well as biogas and solid biomass projects.
“Industrial areas should be considered as priorities, given the large amount of space available for photovoltaic panels, wind energy, and other RES opportunities, also catering for the onsite demand for energy,” urged Mr Vella.
Mr Vella concluded by commenting that the next legislature should aim to push for the inception of a national clusters policy. A clear issue that is affecting the competitiveness of local enterprise is that the lack of economies of scale hinders negotiating capability in international markets. Clusters provide quick access to specialised suppliers and increase productivity.
In light of the Europe 2020 target for Research and Development to represent three per cent of EU GDP by 2020, business clusters would certainly contribute towards increasing R&D investment, which currently stands at only 0.73 per cent of local GDP.
The Malta Business Bureau is a non-profit organisation acting as the EU-business advisory office for the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, and the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association.