The European Commission’s advice to Malta in its assessment of the country’s stability and convergence programme this week, in so many ways, is almost perfectly in synch with what the government is aiming to do through the review of its Vision 2015 economic development programme.

The European Commission urged Malta to take steps to “unlock business potential” if it is to rise to the challenges the country is facing in terms of strengthening its competitiveness. It also advised that Malta needs to raise the level of its human capital as well as continue in its efforts to move toward higher value added economic activities.

Not coincidentally, the very aims of the government’s bid to refresh and reinvigorate its Vision 2015 are precisely the same – unlocking Malta’s, in many cases latent, business potential, creating a more highly skilled workforce, and creating higher added value economic activities for the country.

It is no coincidence that the aim of the exercise being undertaken by an American economic development firm contracted by the government and the Commission’s advice run parallel. These are the economic realities of this day and age, realities that any country needs to bear well in mind if it is to rise from the economic doldrums so many economies have been mired in over the last two years. Malta to date has been something of an exception, but that must not lead the country to complacency if it to succeed once the dark clouds of the recession begin to well and truly part.

Several of the Maltese economy’s stakeholders this week heard an objective analysis of the Maltese economy’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – one in a series of reports being drawn up by Angelou Economics, an American firm that specialises in economic strategy and development.

The external view – from outside Malta as well as outside the EU – and the benchmarking study provided, were refreshing.

The SWOT analysis was based on, among other research, a series of interviews and focus groups recently held with a number of the country’s key economic stakeholders, and forms part of a wider exercise that will form the basis of a new draft of the government’s Vision 2015.

Such a review was deemed necessary given the global economic turmoil of the last two years. It is also aimed at best positioning the country to make the most of what could be an even more challenging post recession world.

This week’s reports are now open to public consultation by way of a website, where the SWOT analysis can also be downloaded for consumption. This exercise will be followed by a detailed analysis of the country’s competitiveness and another presenting the firm’s final recommendations to the country.

It is no coincidence that what the government is attempting through the exercise falls quite neatly in line with the Commission’s own recommendations published days later. Nor was it preordained. It is a case of simple common sense and one of pre-emptively grabbing the bull by the horns to best position the country to make the most of the post-recession world.

Education will be paramount to any success the country is to register in the years and decades to come.

A recent report drawn up by the National Commission for Higher Education unequivocally found that the country’s workforce would need to undergo a virtual paradigm shift if Malta is to remain competitive within the European Union in the years and decades to come.

If the government is to meet its employment and previous Vision 2015 targets, both the numbers of Malta’s workforce and its sets of skills will need to be expanded substantially. With 75 per cent of the Maltese workforce in 2008 falling under the ‘low qualification’ bracket and with 79 per cent of the European Union workforce projected to have ‘medium to high’ qualifications by 2015, the NCHE found that the state of affairs presents a “major challenge for Malta’s competitiveness”.

If Malta is to match the EU’s 2015 workforce skill target, it will need to find an additional 55,000 highly qualified workers and 99,000 medium qualified workers, while it would also need to ‘lose’ 77,000 of its low qualified workers from the labour force.

But, according to the government’s goal of increasing the post-secondary participation rate to 85 per cent and the rate of those enrolling in tertiary education to 35 per cent by 2015, the targets would still fall well short the goals. They would, the report pointed out, only produce 21,000 highly skilled and 35,000 medium skilled labour force entrants – or less than half of what the NCHE forecasts will be needed if Malta is to keep pace with its EU competitors by 2015.

In identifying the significant skills gap in Malta, the NCHE pointed out “sharp contrasts” between current skill levels and those that will be required by 2015, which could imperil Malta’s competitiveness in under five years’ time.

Among the EU as a whole, for example, 29 per cent of workers are forecast to be of the highly qualified variety by 2015, compared with Malta’s current 10 per cent. Medium skilled workers across the EU, meanwhile, are expected to account for 50 per cent of the workforce, compared with Malta’s current 14.7 per cent, while low skilled workers should amount to just 20.8 per cent of the European working population in comparison with Malta’s current 75 per cent.

It is no easy matter to tell the country, as the government has, that plans ceremoniously unveiled some years ago now need to be revised. And here is an opportunity in which the country can rise above petty partisan politics in the real national interest – and failure to do so would fall short of what the country should expect of its political parties.

For example, sparking interest in the sciences among Malta’s youth will go a long towards incentivising them later in life towards high value added economic sectors, and the Prime Minister’s concept of setting up an interactive science museum for children is one small step in the right direction.

But one wonders how such a concept would have been greeted had it come from the Opposition leader. Such was the case when, last Sunday, the Opposition leader suggested the establishment of a second university on the islands. The concept was met with disdain from many of the usual quarters, with all the usual misinterpretations.

But, in actual fact, what the Opposition leader suggested was almost exactly what the government’s consultants and the government itself have also embraced – international educational services. The country would indeed be very well served if such a second university were to be set up – perhaps a branch of a foreign university to attract educational business to Malta while at the same time serving at least a segment of the Maltese population. Perhaps such an institution could be research driven and serve a crucial motor in the country’s drive to enhance its research and development capabilities.

By all means, let us all pull the national rope when it comes to the future direction of the country, and agree upon and stick to a course. After all, whoever is in power next will have to continue down the path forged by the current exercise, lest the country loses track altogether.

Just as the European Commission and the underlying goals of the Vision 2015 revision exercise are in synch, so must be the government and the Opposition. If they fail to synchronise on such a crucial and fundamental issue, the country will undoubtedly find itself in trouble in the years to come.