Malta Will Announce Measures To Attract Digital Nomads As Silvio Schembri Urges Businesses To Look Beyond Pandemic
Malta will announce measures to attract more digital nomads in the near future as part of its plans to rebuild its economy following the COVID-19 pandemic, Economy Minister Silvio Schembri has announced.
“The concept of remote working really interests me and we’ve recently been working on a framework to attract digital nomads,” Schembri said today. “In the coming days, we’ll announce measures to utilise this phenomenon in Malta. These past months have helped us acquire knowledge about our economic system and we now need the wisdom to use this knowledge well.”
Last year, consulting firm Seed proposed launching start-up visas specifically targeted at digital nomads, people who work remotely while traveling from country to country.
“Malta is intrinsically linked to trade and entrepreneurship,” consultant Sarah Martin told Who’sWho.mt “Our strategic location has attracted some of history’s greatest traders and seafarers, and, as an island state with no natural resources, Malta’s economy thrived and continues to thrive on trade.”
Schembri announced this initiative at a conference held to discuss Malta’s prospects post-COVID-19.
Economy Minister Silvio Schembri
Despite Finance Minister Clyde Caruana warning the economic effects of the pandemic are set to be 50 times as bad as the 2008 financial crisis, Schembri struck an upbeat tone.
“Ten years ago, three quarters of you would have probably owned Nokia phones, but now I doubt if even five of you do – this was a company which enjoyed a monopoly over telecommunications but which failed to adapt to the changing times.”
“That’s why re-engineering measures are so important for businesses. This pandemic has given businesses a unique chance to realise that just because something they were doing may have been working, it wasn’t necessarily the best method.”
“Due to the rapid pace of economic growth in recent years, few had the chance to look internally and question their methods because they were catching the manna that was falling from the sky.”
“We didn’t ask whether our way of doing business was the best possible, but COVID-19 served as a wake-up call for many to utilise their resources better.”
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