Private foundation for national competitiveness

Competitive Malta, a foundation for national competitiveness, was yesterday launched "to elevate national competitiveness to the forefront of national debate".

The brainchild of Economic and Management Consultancy Services Ltd and the Malta Council for Science and Technology, it brings together a number of leading private sector organisations, including Bank of Valletta, HSBC, Malta International Airport, Viset, Vodafone, Maltacom, Toly Products and Magro Bros.

They have joined forces to set up the foundation, which is "strategically poised to shape the national economic agenda and to offer concrete recommendations to the government and the private sector to ensure a stronger international competitive infrastructure for the country" for an improved standard of living.

The 10 founding members yesterday signed the statute, considered to be the start of an ambitious initiative.

Competitive Malta is a partner institute of the World Economic Forum, meaning that it is responsible for the yearly collation of the executive opinion surveys for Malta to be featured on the Global Competitiveness Report, said Adrian Said, its chief coordinator and a director at EMCS Ltd.

Speaking at the EMCS conference, entitled Is Malta Competitive?, held at the Corinthia San Gorg yesterday, EMCS chairman and managing director John C. Grech put forward the concept of "Malta Inc".

It was important to "see the big picture... think in terms of the entire country", he said.

"However, Malta Inc should not be equated to Malta Limited, but to Malta Unlimited in that the country's creative capabilities should be unleashed."

Malta was not stimulating its creative capabilities sufficiently, he argued.

Dr Grech listed a series of "mismatches" that Malta was suffering from in terms of expectations and delivery; promotion and product; the welfare state and its sustainability; legislation and its enforcement.

He also referred to the mismatch in Malta's ranking in the Global Competitiveness Report, where it placed 19th in the growth competitiveness index and 42nd in the business competitiveness index.

"It is a shame that the country is offering more opportunities than business and the corporate sector are actually taking up," Dr Grech said.

"In general, we have not done enough to integrate, consolidate and extend our value chain," he said in his speech on building a strategy for national competitiveness.

"Malta is not focusing correctly," he said. "We are afraid that we are not sufficiently efficient but that is because we are not producing the right things. We have to see what we are good at and focus on that.

"Our response is not collective. Having a coherent response to changes in the international environment would help Malta tremendously," Dr Grech maintained.

He said Malta was also "spending very little time on how it is going to position itself long term. We are failing completely on that front; we are not being creative and, therefore, we cannot take rational decisions on investment and policy".

One of the problems of the private sector is that a number of companies were inbred and did not use professional management, he said, mentioning the lack of strategic alliances and coordination between companies.

"They are trying to preserve a domain, rather than run a business," he said.