The Labour Party is to start presenting its model for the country’s development in the next two decades in the coming months, leader Joseph Muscat said today.

Speaking during a Malta Institute of Management conference ‘The 2010 – 2011 Global Economic Outlook : A Political Economic perspective’, Dr Muscat said that the coming 10 years would see changes what had dominated the last five decades.

In the past years there was an increase in population, which meant more people in employment, more capital and a bigger market.

The next decade would be the first where the population would, most probably, not grow while the people would become older. This would happen mainly in the most developed countries with Japan and Europe being at the forefront of this trend. It would also affect developing countries such as Turkey, Mexico, China and India.

Dr Muscat said that Malta’s case was somewhat different because its fertility and population rate would peak in 20 years’ time. The country should transform this situation into an opportunity to expand economic activity. For this, a national effort was needed, Dr Muscat said.

He said that it was important that all human resources that could work did so after receiving the best possible training and education.

This would entail a major effort to educate and motivate educators to take this exciting opportunity with all the responsibilities the new decade would offer.

Dr Muscat said that an effort had to be made for female participation in the job market to grow. This should be done by ensuring the complete elimination of inequality not just on paper but in all the necessary provisions.

All this, the Labour leader said, had to be placed in the context of Malta’s EU Presidency in 2017 which was to be a crucial test for Malta’s membership in the EU.

To succeed, the country had to radically change the way it looked at its own, European, regional and world problems.