Enable and empower the local businesses to gain access to the larger global market by participating in the eBusiness community - Ministry for Investment, Industry and Information Technology

Prosperity is about finding new ways to make a living. Probably the most important fundamental change independence has brought about is the paradigm shift this country has had to make in the way it earns a living.

It is true that colonialism is by definition an extractive phenomenon, where the interest of the colonist by far precedes the needs of the native. However, the Knights and the British serviced their needs in Malta by employing the Maltese, who prospered if and when the colonists needed them to do anything to service the latter's needs: typically at times of war or territorial expansion.

This reality is now, thankfully, confined to the history books. But it is relevant to point out afresh that the absence of this reality has signified, in the relative recent history of these islands, the need to attract the interest of the rest of the world in what we can do to be able to earn ourselves a living. Our chances to succeed depend on our skills to actually create something worthwhile and sell it abroad.

Islands may not be obvious points from which to start an almost completely export-oriented economy. There are no bridges or roads over the distances that separate us from the closest mainlands and we have always had to compensate by other means of transport, often at a higher cost than our competitors had to pay.

Small islands also have a few more extra disadvantages to overcome. It is hard to acquire a reputation when you are so small and not exactly in the way of the prevailing trade routes.

The talent to overcome these disadvantages earned and proven by the spectacular growth our country has sustained over the past four decades, will come in handy even as some of those disadvantages are overcome.

As an EU-member state, Malta has influence on the world stage disproportionate to its size. The market we call home will no longer be of less than 400,000 but more than 400 million. The visible obstacles to trade on the mainland: the sea and the cost of transport will remain, but the invisible costs, often more formidable and insurmountable: tariffs, barriers and prejudice are fading into memory.

Technology is making even the most visible of obstacles, less and less relevant. However, we have no monopoly on knowledge and technology, by any stretch. ICTs are a tool that is common to our competitors, which is just as well because our competitors are also our customers and we can only hope to use ICTs to sell, if our customers can use ICTs to buy.

Success, and a sharp competitive edge, will therefore not be won simply by owning technologies, but being skilled in wielding them in innovative ways that others have not yet thought of.

'Malta' must become freely associated with reliable and competitively priced products and services. When that happens, finding Malta online will be as easy as finding anywhere else on line, but buying from Malta online will feel a safer bet.

To continue to live, we must continue to grow, and to continue to grow we must be the first and the best in delivering to our customers what they need wherever in the world they might be.

This is one of the 13 objectives of the National ICT Strategy for the coming three years. Anyone wishing to learn more can download a complete copy of the strategy from www.miti.gov.mt.