Malta’s geographical position means that most of our manufacturing industry must import its raw materials and has to export its merchandise via container ships.

Our industry employers do not have the luxury of getting their goods overland like their competitors on the European continent do. The result is, and has always been, more and more added transportation costs onto their cost base.

Let me give one simple example of this. In 2016, a detailed study by one of Malta’s leading industry stakeholders found that while the Belgian and Italian industrial employer had merely an average of two per cent and six per cent respectively in transport costs, their Maltese counterpart had almost 20 per cent for the same transport.

In other words, Maltese industry was not competing, and could not compete, on an equal playing field with its European competitors. It could never, due to Malta being permanently surrounded by the sea.

Not because it is not able to but because of Malta’s location at the periphery of Europe, being an outermost island state.

This was the scenario until COVID-19 struck hard in 2020.

Post-COVID, the costs for our manufacturing industry, already beset by huge systematic handicaps due to our location and thus logistics, went up enormously.

Just one figure should suffice to show the pain inflicted by COVID on our industry and its 22,000 employees. The container shipment costs from China to Malta went up from €2,000 per unit to €11,000 for the same trip and the same container. And reputable studies declare that those costs are not very likely to go down to pre-COVID levels in the near future.

In January, I was asked and tasked by the leader of the opposition to be responsible for industry and competitiveness, among other matters. Quite a tall order in these trying times. I set out to meet and listen out the main concerns from the main stakeholders in industry. It was very evident that their main concern was, and is, the unsustainable extra costs they are being made to pay every week to get their goods to and from Malta.

A PN government will set up an annual industry fund starting with €40 million- Jason Azzopardi

Since 2012, Malta has annually been going down the Logistics Performance Index of the World Bank. From 43rd place in 2012 with Croatia lagging behind us, we are now 69th worldwide and the EU member state occupying the last place in this index. An index which is consulted by foreign investors to gauge how easy or not it would be to import and export to and from a country.

This should be a matter of concern to all of us.

Industrial leaders, thousands of them, some large and many small- and medium-sized, employ more than 22,000 families. More than that, they indirectly employ thousands more through subcontracting. For instance, a particular large company based in Malta, employing more than 1,000, has more than 30 subcontractors all of whom are very small enterprises.

During these last months, the Cluster Group, of which I am a member, within the PN responsible for industry and made up of people from all walks of life, especially people who never set foot in the PN headquarters, met, discussed, studied and researched this Gordian knot.

Last week, we launched a number of proposals to help and to bolster our industry and the thousands of jobs which rely upon it, chief of which committing a PN government to set up an annual national fund starting with €40 million.

This money will be disbursed, in consultation with the stakeholders, to offset all the logistics and transportation costs being incurred by industry each year as a result of our insularity. This money will result in our GDP increasing by around 10 per cent annually. I am satisfied that our signal proposal has already received the public support of the Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber of SMEs and the Malta Employers Association.

For this national fund to materialise, we are calling upon the government to immediately agree with the opposition to present our compelling case to the European Commission for state aid regulations to be amended and this crucial aid to start being granted.

Together, we can do this. We can change this, yes.

There are articles in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and State Aid Regulations and Guidelines which should be the springboard to make and win our case.

This is beyond any partisan debate and way beyond partisan politics.

There is the basic competitiveness of our industry at stake.

Let us together change for the better the environment in which our manufacturing industry is working, thereby securing the jobs of thousands and generating hundreds of new ones.