The government and SmartCity have refuted the European Commission’s description of the hi-tech village as a real estate venture.
In its latest report on competitiveness, the Commission cited SmartCity as an example of Malta’s weakness to monitor reforms, insisting the project was “criticised to have turned into a real estate venture at the expense of the envisaged IT focus”.
SmartCity CEO Fareed Abdulrahman expressed surprise, disagreeing with the Commission’s assessment.
“SmartCity Malta is far from being classified as anything but a self-sustained industry township for knowledge-based ICT and media focused clusters,” Mr Abdulrahman said.
He insisted that ongoing investment by SmartCity proved “exactly the opposite” of what was claimed. A bigger investment was made in the ICT infrastructure development of the project, he added.
Mr Abdulrahman said the company implemented the most advanced and reliable hi-tech infrastructure available in the country today.
“SmartCity is a long-term project, which will be run over different phases for a total period of 10 years from which Malta will reap great rewards,” he said.
In its reaction, the IT Ministry underlined the fact that the Commission’s report did not make the criticism about SmartCity its own. “The choice of words cannot be deemed as incidental and clearly means that the Commission is only reporting what some have reported to it – no prize for guessing who!”
The ministry did not mention names but IT Minister Austin Gatt said on Bondìplus that the Labour Party and the newspaper MaltaToday had in the past criticised the project as a real estate venture.
A ministry spokesman noted the Commission made no conclusion of its own: “It beggars belief how a project can be termed a real estate venture when there is not one residence or one hotel to speculate on... Has speculation in Malta now turned to offices?”
Construction work at SmartCity is moving ahead according to plan although the number of full-time jobs generated is nowhere near what had been promised.
However, SmartCity is not in breach of its contract on the number of jobs generated because the obligation only kicks in when the government fulfils is side of the deal. A pumping station on site, which the government should have removed by December 2008, is still standing. Once the pumping station is removed SmartCity will have to employ 400 people in two years, rising by another 1,000 the year after.
Labour yesterday accused the government of lack of planning and hit out at Dr Gatt’s comment on television that the project was not a financial burden on taxpayers.
“It is no wonder that public finances are in such a bad state if a seasoned minister in Lawrence Gonzi’s Cabinet considers the large stretch of land in a prime area as being worth nothing,” Labour IT spokesman Michael Farrugia said.
Dr Farrugia said a future Labour government would ensure the project was completed in a judicious manner.
Reacting, the ministry said Labour had always been against this project. It pointed out that investors would surely not be needlessly pumping money into SmartCity.