In its editorial of January 4, The Times argued that the economy requires an injection of new life. It argued that the country needs to face up to today's realities, that we need to be more sensitive to the country's needs and that the country requires strong leadership from the government and the rest of the social partners.

The real problem that the country is facing today is how to raise the growth rate of 0.6 per cent attained last year. The Times argued that we can no longer postpone decisions related to the sizing down of government, the transformation of state corporations into leaner and efficient ones, and to the reform of the pension and health systems, in addition to attracting new foreign direct investment.

This editorial followed the one of December 27 when The Times recalled that the government has been insisting on measures that truly achieve the aims which the national interest requires us to achieve.

The Times asked all the social partners to rise to the occasion and meet the challenge. These two editorials echo very much the feeling that exists in the country today. This does not mean that whatever we did in the past has been all wrong; it just means that we need to take account of today's realities and today's challenges cannot be tackled by resorting to the solutions of past years.

To my mind this is a very important issue. I strongly believe that when the current pension and health systems took shape, the country really needed at that time to ensure that nobody was to be denied access to the state's health services because of a lack of adequate financial resources.

Equally, nobody should have been retiring from work without having access to a minimum pension. We cannot judge those decisions from today's perspective.

Similarly, the setting up of state corporations was a requirement to ensure that we avoided the setting up of private monopolies in the provision of services that have a strategic importance for the economy and society at large. The issue is that these corporations continued for a long time to be run in a manner that did not take into account the evolution of new work practices.

It would obviously be very difficult to criticise the government for this, however the blame (if we have to talk of blame) has to be laid at the door of all social partners.

The trade unions and the organisations representing the business sector have resisted change in the past whenever their sectorial interests were being threatened. One very clear example of this has been the impact of EU membership. The public service was far more prepared for this than several businesses or some trade unions.

The issue is that we all want consultation whenever our interests are threatened but we want decisiveness whenever someone else's interests are threatened. Unconsciously, we tend to go back to yesterday's solutions to address the problems we face today. There is a fear of uncharted paths.

In effect some of these paths are not as uncharted as we may think. Other countries have beaten this path, countries that today are considered to have had good economic growth rates.

They include EU member states and non-member states. They include developed economies and economies that are still considered as developing. They include European states and non-European states.

I do not believe that we should just adopt any one of the models used by these countries, but we can adapt some elements of these models to our requirements. It does not mean that what has worked abroad must work here; however neither does it mean that what has worked abroad cannot by definition work also in Malta.

The efforts to obtain agreement on the social pact have been one attempt at fresh thinking. The investment incentives announced in the last budget are also another attempt at fresh thinking considering that this is the first time that the government has sought to incentivise the services sector and not just encourage it.

Agreements reached between trade unions and management at the individual enterprise level (although not at all publicised) are examples of how fresh thinking is being adopted at the micro level.

However, trade unions still deal with government in a manner that is different from that used in the private sector. Some segments of the business sector still expect government to provide comfort against business risks.

Yet other segments of the business sector still evade tax to a very significant extent. A percentage of employees still do not believe in giving their day's worth. The common good is all too often given the least priority when compared to everything else.

We all seem to agree that economic growth needs to be stepped up as everyone stands to benefit from this. We all agree that our economy is an open one and that we must ensure that it can withstand the challenges that arise from this openness. We all agree that some parts of the economy need to be restructured because they are a drag on the other sectors.

The ball is in everyone's court to come up with fresh concrete ideas on how all this can be achieved while maintaining social cohesion.