Over the years, the Malta Federation of Industry has been stressing to Government and various parastatal bodies the importance of limiting the questionnaires and surveys distributed to business operators.

All surveys conducted are important in view of drawing up the necessary statistics in our country, particularly in view of benchmarking and our country's inclusion in international statistical analysis. However, the FOI has often highlighted the occurrence of overlapping information being requested from different government entities through their respective questionnaires, forms or surveys.

The completion of these mandatory questionnaires is not only time-consuming, but also very costly whether completed internally by the business operator or externally by a consultant, inevitably leading to increased costs, particularly for SMEs.

In its efforts to urge government entities to combine their respective surveys and thus limit the duplication of requests, the FOI has approached the National Statistics Office (NSO), which has acknowledged the problems reported to arise as a result of such studies. In view of this, the FOI is pleased to announce that the NSO has embarked on an exercise to rationalise the number of business questionnaires it frequently issues to enterprises.

In this regard, the FOI shall continue to monitor the progress of such an exercise thus ensuring that the end result will be beneficial to its members.