Watch: Traffic Will Double Unless Malta Introduces A New Economic Model, Clyde Caruana Warns
Traffic will become twice as bad in the near future unless Malta overhauls its entire economic model, Finance and Employment Minister Clyde Caruana warned today.
In a speech launching Malta’s first national skills survey, Caruana strongly suggested a shift from ‘Muscatonomics’, the economic model promoted by former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat which prioritised rapid economic growth at the cost of overdevelopment, overpopulation and related social problems.
“I don’t mind saying that I used to be at the forefront, some would call me the cheerleader, in promoting a government policy for Malta to attract human resources to expand its productive capacity,” Caruana said, a reference to his time in charge of JobsPlus.
“That was government policy for the past two legislatures and since 2013, our job market kept growing and growing and growing.”
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“Social dependency went down drastically while the Maltese employment rate rise from the bottom of the EU rankings to 8th place.”
“However, we cannot expect the economy to continue growing for the next 10 years using this same recipe. People don’t just expect economic growth but better economic development, which means that people won’t just have more money to spend but a better quality of life.”
“To make this leap forwards on quality of life, our economic development and growth must be different.”
“If we stick with the same recipe, then instead of spending one hour in traffic to get to work, we will start spending one and a half hours or two hours. We will keep building hotels but beds won’t be filled. It is clear that the recipe of the past can’t apply to the future.”
“We will end up wasting our scarce resources that could be invested in other sectors and give us a better result,” he said.
Former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat
As many politicians have done, Caruana said Malta should learn lessons from Singapore’s path of economic development.
“Let’s forget for a moment that our political systems are different form each other, but if we go back in time before both countries gained independence, there wasn’t such a difference in the standard of life of both countries. However, the level is now much higher in Singapore than it is in Malta.”
Caruana said the way forward is to strongly invest in the skills of the Maltese workforce, with the new survey the first step forward in this regard.
“We can’t expect to see better results if we keep repeating what we have been doing so far. However, if we change the way we work and aspire for more added value, I am convinced the government can provide a different kind of economic growth that leads to better economic development.”
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