Roughly two weeks ago, or less, this paper sent questions to all the banks in Malta asking them whether they were going to follow the plea made by the Governor of the Central Bank, Professor Josef Bonnici, urging the banks to cut their interest margins so as to boost growth.

Of all the banks approached by this paper, only the two major banks, Bank of Valletta and HSBC, replied to the paper and their reactions, such as they were, were reproduced by this paper last week.

Since then, no other bank has sent in any reply and so the matter, up to now, stays there.

The context to the Governor’s speech naturally was the recent decision by the European Central Bank to cut interest rates.

The wider context is the discussion in Europe regarding austerity measures on the one side and growth facilitating measures considering the extremely high unemployment levels practically everywhere in Europe, although Malta has a relatively low unemployment rate.

There can be no doubt, however, that Malta needs measures that boost growth and in particular enterprises which have been and still are buffeted by taxes, government-induced costs and problems regarding sales, given that the customers in turn have their own problems to cope with many more pressures and stresses regarding daily living.

The point has been frequently made in many sectors in today’s Europe that the banks, generally speaking, need to contribute more to boost growth. The point has also been made that governments, again generally speaking, need to do more to boost growth than just follow austerity paths.

However, as a Eurostat study carried in this issue is showing, the enterprises in Malta have not stayed passively awaiting help from the government or from the banks. They have been quite proactive with regard to their presence on the social media ranging from Facebook to Twitter and blogs. In fact, they are at the highest levels among all European countries.

Time and again, the resilience and the creativity of the private sector enterprises in Malta keeps surprising us. This, of course, does not let the banks or the government off the hook as things would be immeasurably better if these two, banks and government, were more proactive and helpful.

One must however note that whereas in the past Malta’s small size and its geographic location were two huge obstacles in the way of growth, the developments through ICT, computers, the Internet, and now the social media have eliminated most of the disadvantages of the past and put Malta’s enterprises on a much more level playing field than ever before. Obviously, membership of a continental bloc, the EU, with its single market (uneven though it may be) has opened up for Maltese enterprises a huge market such as Malta never had.

The banks, to come back to them, are very present in the Maltese economy and their help over the past years has been immeasurable. Much of the merit for the growth that has been registered is no doubt due to them. But maybe, as the Governor has said (it was not the first time that Professor Bonnici made this remark) they still can do more to boost growth.

While the perception of many after the Governor’s words and in the context of the ECB rate decision, may have veered in the direction of a rate cut to follow the ECB one, perhaps an even better way could be to come together to offer a sort of Venture Fund for start-ups and people with ideas and no money (or no property to serve as guarantee).