Malta ranks among "moderate innovators", featuring third in the four categories in a recent study by the European Commission.
The research, commissioned by the EU Executive to gauge innovation in the EU's 27, however notes that Malta is catching up fast with EU leader countries, adding that the island is one of the leading countries trying to innovate their economy.
The Commission report says that while "Malta's innovation performance is below the EU27 average, the rate of improvement is above that of the EU27".
According to Brussels, relative strengths, compared to the country's average performance, are in finance while relative weaknesses are in human resources and entrepreneurship, pointing a finger at the private sector, which, it notes, seems to be much less innovative than the public sector.
"We are observing a true commitment by the government to innovate the Maltese economy. Substantial investment is being dedicated to research and development, to having more people obtaining PhDs and through continuous investment in technology, enabling Malta's economy to make the most out of the ICT phenomenon," a Commission spokesman said.
"However, the private sector is still lagging behind and is clearly not investing as much in R&D. This is hampering Malta's potential," the official added.
The European Innovation Scoreboard for 2009 includes 29 innovation-related indicators with publicly-available data from 2007/2008 and trend analyses for the EU 27 member states as well as Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. As in previous years, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Sweden and the UK rank as the EU's leaders in this area while Bulgaria, Latvia and Romania lag behind, even though their performance has improved.
Presenting the latest data, Industry Commissioner Antonio Tajani stressed the need of increasing investment in research and innovation as this was the "key to moving from crisis to sustainability".
"This is why the Commission is maintaining the three per cent of GDP target for R&D investment in Europe and proposing realistic national targets with robust monitoring," Mr Tajani said.
The latest statistics indicate that the EU in general is having difficulty in catching up with the US in innovation performance although it maintains a clear lead over the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China.