When speaking broadly about the slowdown, which is already affecting the Maltese economy, Prime Minister Robert Abela rightly surmised that the construction industry could be one of the main sectors that would help in due course to raise the country out of the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nobody could quarrel with him about that – as a generalisation. For better or for worse, construction is undoubtedly one of drivers of the economy.

The key question, however, is what kind of construction industry should emerge into the brave new post-coronavirus world? When the pandemic will have abated in about 18 months’ time on current best estimates, and as the policies to reconstruct the economy take shape, there will be an opportunity for political leaders to build on this terrible experience, hopefully in a new way.

In a country chastened by the economic and social setbacks of this dreadful virus, it may even lead to inducing a new willingness among Maltese politicians and people to address Malta’s environment and urban landscape with a whole new seriousness.

Two of Malta’s economists – JP Fabri, a partner in Seed Consultancy, and Marie Briguglio, a lecturer at the University of Malta – reacting to Abela’s hopes for the construction industry to kick-start the economy post-COVID, expressed the view that this enforced pause in economic activity provided Malta with the opportunity to shift the focus of the construction industry towards the concept of sustainability.

Fabri said that while the construction sector could play an important economic role, “the country needed to look at a sustainable, long-term model”.

The construction economy was an interlinked chain of different sectors – individual land and property owners, estate agents, furniture-makers, kitchen and bath-room specialists, architects – which together sustain activity and generate wealth and employment. According to his research, business leaders are looking at postponing investments, not cancelling them. It was important to focus on “strategic spatial planning to ensure that the supply mirrors the expected demand”.

Briguglio recognised the construction industry as a sector that was still able to work during the lockdown “to prevent total meltdown and avoid larger bail-out costs”. But she focussed on the opportunity provided by current circumstances to invest in much-needed “social infrastructure” – investing now in rebuilding safe pavements everywhere and better public open spaces.

Malta needed a modal shift and the kind of infrastructure that allows it. “We could wake up to find a better, more socially inclusive Malta with 2020 infrastructure”. 

Both economists have rightly focussed on the need for sustainable development to be placed at the centre of post-COVID economic regeneration. This is the absolute antithesis of Malta’s experience of the last decade where the greed of construction developers has been given free rein and the interests of the few have come at the expense of public well-being.

In a post-COVID Malta, the principles of sustainable development should be placed at the centre of government planning and the environment. The construction industry must be tightly regulated and all large-scale development projects reviewed until a comprehensive, sustainable development plan is introduced.

The Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Planning must be given the task of achieving much-needed balance between the need for construction to continue to play a positive role in the economy without returning to the unsustainable free-for-all that marked the immediate period before the pandemic.