Finance Minister Clyde Caruana has cricitised the standard of education in Malta, arguing a highly skilled workforce is the only way to build an economy that does not rely on importing foreign labour.
“I cannot understand why after 50 years of independence our education is still so poor and it is still a big deal for someone to get a basic education”, he told parliament on Monday.
The most recent Labour Force Survey shows that almost 42% of Malta’s population has a secondary level of education, with only one in four people getting a university degree or tertiary level of education.
Ultimately, Caruana argued, if we want Malta to be more productive with fewer people, we need a workforce that is more skilled.
Accusing both sides of "missing the woods for the trees", Caruana called for a more serious and dispassionate analysis of Malta’s population change which considers Malta's economic and social challenges.
Both sides of the house were failing to address the issue of population growth in a credible way, he said.
An exasperated Caruana quipped that while electoral campaigns previously revolved around “infantile” discussions over which party could create the most jobs, MPs now seem to be engaged in a race over who could reduce the population most.
Last week Prime Minister Robert Abela accused opposition leader Bernard Grech of using language "that you hear from the far right" after Grech criticised Malta's drastic population growth.
Instead of simply focusing on population numbers, Caruana argued, MPs should be asking themselves how they could grow an economy that did not need more people and build industries that were capital-intensive, rather than labour-intensive.
“If Malta picks the road of industries that grow the economy well but keep needing many people to operate, then the country will produce more, but property prices will explode even further and people will be completely priced out of the market”, he said.
This could happen regardless of whether foreign workers are low-skilled or not, he said, warning that importing high-skilled, well-paid workers will only accelerate the problem as local families struggle to keep pace.
Energy subsidies to stay
Earlier in his speech, Caruana defended Malta’s ongoing reliance on energy subsidies in the face of reports by the IMF and EU calling on Malta to wean itself off the subsidies.
He said that the argument that the government is presenting to international bodies is that the subsidies need to remain in place until Malta completes its work on infrastructural projects that will lower the unit cost of energy, such as the second interconnector and offshore energy projects.
He also shot back at criticism over Malta’s growing debt from opposition MPs who spoke during the debate, including Jerome Caruana Cilia, Ivan Bartolo and Ivan Castillo.
Caruana Cilia, in particular, pointed to how the government’s estimates show that Malta’s debt is set to hit €13b over the next few years. Maltese citizens will soon be paying €5m per week to cover interest rates over Malta’s soaring debts, he said.
In his rebuttal, Caruana argued that Malta’s debt needs to be viewed in relation to how much the country is producing.
Although debt is up, the country’s productivity has gone up at an even higher rate, he said. This means that the weight of the debt has gone down from 70% a decade ago to 53% today.