Spurring ahead

People looking at the same object might see different things. One person will see a glass half empty, while to another it will be half full. The same things might occur to different people and yet the reaction might be totally different. This is subjectiv

Few aspects of our life are at the mercy of subjectivity, a particular case being economic performance. This is because its measurement is imperfect and can impact on different people in various ways, with expectations playing a key role. Very often, economic success is the subject of animated discussions and is a constant feature in political discourses and debates.

The fact that, on a national level, discussion on the economic performance is constantly taking second or third place says a lot. It means that there is consensus that, economically, we are doing very well. We are managing to achieve surprisingly good results with all the economic performance indicators constantly exceeding the benchmark.

This has also been the case for Gozo. Recent NSO figures show that, in 2015, Gozo experienced a very high economic expansion, growing by almost 10 per cent. This is no mean feat. Compared to 2012, it has grown by 25 per cent, which means that, on average, the productive activities in Gozo have increased by €2,500 for each Gozitan resident. These results are even more impressive when one considers that the sectors that are underpinning economic growth in Malta have only recently started receiving the attention and support they deserve, meaning that the potential for further growth is there.

This recent data on regional GPP has been made available a few weeks after another set of data by the NSO was published, showing that in the first three years of this administration, the number of Gozitan residents working full-time increased by 1,351 – an increase of about nine full-time jobs per week, which is twice the increase observed in the latter part of the previous legislature.

Equally important is the fact that official figures show that a large part of this increase in employment opportunities were jobs created in Gozo. In fact, in the first three years of this administration, the number