Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday appealed to the business community to open its doors for greater female participation.
The Malta Stock Exchange... is still a very closed shop
He made the comment during a face-to-face meeting with the all-male council of the Malta Business Bureau at Castille on a totally different issue.
The appeal came on the back of Government’s resistance to a proposal by the EU Commission to introduce mandatory women quotas on the boards of listed companies. “I would like to see more women in business,” Dr Gonzi said as he appealed for their voices to be heard.
Dr Gonzi noted that more young women were graduating from University and there were increasing examples of women who ran their own business. But this was not enough in what has always been a traditionally male-dominated area.
A spokesman for the business bureau later told The Times the organisation was committed to seeing greater female participation and was proactively involved in two EU-funded programmes.
The MBB recently concluded the Ambassadors in Malta for Increasing Women Entrepreneurs project, which was intended to proactively boost female participation in business, the spokesman said.
During the meeting at Castille, bureau president George Vella presented Dr Gonzi with a study on the effects of the European single market on domestic companies.
The study was part of the EU-wide commemoration this month of the 20th anniversary of the creation of the single market.
Mr Vella said some of the problems raised were real but others were probably based on wrong perceptions. He insisted that even perceptions had to be addressed, possibly through more information.
A problem highlighted by businesses was the importation of goods from Sicily not for personal use by unregistered individuals.
Some businesses believed border controls to clamp down on this illicit activity were lacking. The lack of control, Mr Vella said, could be a perception but even if it were, the problem had to be addressed in full respect of the free flow of goods.
Businesses complained that Malta was transposing EU directives too fast and called for more information campaigns when directives were about to be transposed. Mr Vella proposed transposing directives in batches.
But Mr Vella was critical of the role of the Malta Stock Exchange, which was an alternative way of tapping finance. He said it was still a closed shop and very difficult for SMEs to be listed, even in the alternative market listing.
A clear trend that emerged from the survey was that eight years after EU membership, businesses still considered the European single market as highly beneficial “to the entrepreneurial set-up and for economic growth”.