The Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry has signed a memorandum of understanding with Malta Industrial Parks in a bid to bring about a quality leap in the running and maintenance of industrial parks in Malta. The MoU is expected to provide a structure within which the quality of the public areas in industrial parks will be improved, through a process of devolution to tenants associations.

Chamber president Anton Borg explained how in its Economic Vision for Malta 2014-2020 the Chamber specifically recommended the establishment of such collaboration agreements between the public and private sectors that can bring about results that would otherwise not be achievable.

Such collaboration agreements can bring about results

“We feel that often, the private sector has the ideas and the proper expertise of how sectors and projects should operate. The government often possesses the resources to run certain projects but will need the support from the private sector for them to be successful. Such collaboration agreements bring the best of both worlds together in a bid to look at what we can actually achieve together,” Mr Borg explained.

Norman Aquilina, chairman of the manufacturing and other industries economic group, expressed satisfaction at the conclusion of negotiations on the MoU. He said that at its core, the memorandum sets out a process of devolution of the maintenance responsibilities for the common areas within industrial estates.

This means that MIP will be passing the funds available for the maintenance and management of industrial estates on to the respective tenants associations to be utilised to the best effect based on the agreed tenants’ priorities.

The MoU was signed by Mr Borg and Mr Aquilina for the Malta Chamber and Tony Zahra for the Malta Industrial Parks, in the presence of Chris Cardona, Minister for the Economy, Investment and Small Business.