Achievements of past six years a springboard for country to advance – Joseph Muscat

The achievements of the past six years are just the spring-board that we can use to build this country, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said when addressing the EY Malta Attractiveness Event 2018 yesterday.

Muscat noted how statistics from the European Commission show that the island had passed through 21 consecutive quarters of economic growth, and that in each of these quarters that growth was at least double – sometimes even ten times – that growth which was taking place in mainland Europe.

The Prime Minister said that there was no one single faceted explanation for this growth, and said that the explanation certainly was not that GDP is being increased simply through population, as the Opposition leader Adrian Delia has alluded to in recent days.

Maltese households have nearly €12 billion stored in Maltese banks; a 56% increase since 2013, whilst the value of Malta’s stock has risen to €3.4 billion; a rise of a third, Muscat said. All this did not happen by mere coincidence, it is a result of a clear vision supported by a willingness to act and take decisions, Muscat continued.

Muscat noted the scepticism of public service officials when they were told that energy tariffs were to be lowered, he noted the same scepticism of EU officials when he spoke of reforming Malta’s taxation system to encourage investment, and he remembered the same scepticism of business leaders when he said that not only would Malta be leaders of Europe, but part of the global elite. But now, Muscat said, these measures were all being done, and that this was the springboard that Malta was building upon.

Speaking on the survey which EY launched on Wednesday, Muscat said that it shows that Malta needs to be a cosmopolitan society. He took aim at the Opposition Leader again, saying that wanting economic growth with new niches is not compatible with not wanting immigration into the country.

The economic reforms of the past legislature, Muscat added, have set the country up to be ahead of the curve. With the new parliamentary secretariat responsible for blockchain, Malta is showing that it is working towards the future, Muscat said. What the country has offered, he said, is sensible regulation – a first in blockchain – which is putting minds at rest, but at the same time putting Malta at the forefront of this emerging industry.

He said that the next step is to put Malta at the forefront of the emerging artificial intelligence industry, and indeed he said that the government was in consultation with industry leaders to be the first country to have a framework for AI in place within the next few months.