The process to set up a new centralised due diligence agency will begin next month, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri said.
The new agency will eventually run checks on foreign direct investment and warranted professionals offering corporate services.
The government will also begin work on the reforms that will introduce the right for businesses to open a bank account.
Tied to this is the introduction of a new tribunal for those businesses that have been refused a bank account.
Companies have found it increasingly difficult to do business in Malta, with banks shedding sectors which are deemed to be too risky.
The banking and diligence reforms were some of the Labour Party’s main pledges for businesses during the March general election campaign.
Next steps
Schembri said he had convened a meeting of the government’s consultative council on enterprise, which is made up of the heads of regulatory bodies like the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) and the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU).
The meeting saw a rough roll-out plan agreed with the entities responsible for licensing and policing business activity.
Schembri said he had also presented a cabinet memo to his fellow ministers, which had proposed setting up a steering committee that would be responsible to introduce the reforms.
Under the reform, banks will still retain the right to refuse a bank account based on certain criteria.
A new banking review office will be set up and tasked, among other things, with looking into why business loans often take months to be approved.
This new office will make recommendations to banks to speed up the approval process.
Centralised agency to first function for major tender bids
Meanwhile, Schembri said the new centralised due diligence agency will first be “sandboxed” and used exclusively by the government to vet bidders in major tenders.
Once the kinks are ironed out, the government plans to roll it out for all foreign direct investment entities seeking to operate here. It will also be used for notaries, lawyers and other corporate service providers.
Schembri said the new agency would cut out the current “extra” red tape facing businesses today as they will no longer have to submit the same document to more than one entity.
“If one entity does due diligence, then it should be enough. If it is good for one entity, it should be good enough for the others,” Schembri said.
Next month, Schembri will be meeting with regulators to begin drafting a legal regime for the changes.
Asked for a deadline on when he expects the reforms to be up and running, the minister was reluctant, saying only the changes were being treated as urgent.