The Malta Developers Association has called on the government to carry out a professional economic and legal study to establish the stock of properties for sale or rent and to classify them according to market segment.
Michael Falzon, association chairman, said the association could not afford to carry out the study on its own, since it cost €33,000. However it would contribute to it if the government and others, such as the banks, did.
The past four years, he said, had been unhappy ones for developers and the coming five years would be even worse, not only due to the slowdown in international economic conditions, but also because of the uncertainty caused locally by the government's attitude to the property market.
He noted that the share of the construction industry within GDP fell from 3.4% in 2007 to 3.1% in 2010. Moreover, the number of permits issued for dwellings fell from 11,343 in 2007 to 4,444 in 2010. At the same time the exposure of the financial sector (banks) to the construction industry had more than doubled since 2003 to €1.5 billion last year.
The governemnt, Mr Falzon, was looking at the property development sector as the 'milch cow' of the economy, but, at the same time it was adopted a laissez faire attitude.
The construction industry was facing a prolonged crisis which would ripple into the the rest of the economy unless it was managed in time.
In the same way as the government managed the tourism and manufacturing sectors through MTA and Malta Enterprise, the developers felt there should be one interlocutor with the government.
Mr Falzon said the developers were concerned about the Mepa reform because it was leading the Authority into an alley, especially with regard to revenue, Despite the steep increase in tariffs, income was down because Mepa was only receiving 80 development applications a month - down from 100 a week in recent years. As a result Mepa was relying more on the government subvention than before.
He said that uncertainty was causing development to ground to a halt and thousands of jobs which depended on the industry were at risk. Meetings with the prime minister and ministers had been held and proposals for the next Budget had been made, Mr Falzon, said, but he preferred not to go into detail.