Competiveness: The Common Language

Via Times of Malta

from Vince Farrugia's blog

“ Today it’s essential we manage our economy in a measured way. This is my gospel ”
Measuring the Maltese economy's performance against our competitors is very important. The world Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Index provides the instrument to enable us to make this comparison. Unfortunately, in Malta we tend to compare with our own performance in a previous period. This is not enough as we might, in practice, be moving at a slower pace when compared with our competitors.

Competitiveness is something we have to work on all the time. Government must have this as its basic philosophy. It is not acceptable that the World Economic Forum places Malta at 52nd from 131 economies, and within the list of the most problematic factors for doing business in Malta we continue to find areas that are within the capabilities of the public service to resolve. Topping the list of issues that are hampering Malta's global competitiveness is the inefficient Government bureaucracy. Access to finance is a high second. Tax rates, restrictive labour regulations, inadequate educated workforce, tax regulations and inflation are also prime issues. These are issues that we must resolve. It's time someone starts using the hard stick. Small steps forward are not enough.

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