Newly-appointed PN director of business development Ivan Bartolo told this newspaper yesterday that he wants to win back the business community, explaining: “The PN has a real chance to commercialise and show the business community in Malta that we mean business, by being creative”.

On Friday, PN leader Adrian Delia announced that Bartolo would be leading the business development plan within the party.

Bartolo said: “We are going to set up a business plan by analysing the low-hanging fruit the party has before it from a commercial point of view.”

He added that restructuring the party’s assets is essential in order to create more value and to offer better proposals to the whole Maltese population. He also spoke of the importance of rebranding and the positioning of the party, since an updated party is more likely to attract different and new audiences.

Sharing his ideas with The Malta Independent on Sunday, Bartolo also emphasised the need for change in the party’s membership (tesserati) scheme: “I believe that we need to correct certain aspects of the scheme. At the moment, you can buy lifetime membership, but now that we have a much higher number of floating voters and people switching between parties, going for lifetime memberships is not the way forward because you can effectively have people voting for different parties in your own backyard.”

The scheme, he said, should also be suitably priced for different groups in society such as the young and the elderly, while also proposing the idea of a membership card that provides retail discounts as an example.

The business plan that Bartolo believes will start in the New Year will also be focused on two aspects: property and the voters. “The PN has certain properties that are beautiful and that tend to be closed on Fridays or Saturdays. We could use these to provide services, for example for young children who have working parents,” he said.

Bartolo said that the party’s biggest asset is its 100,000+ voters, suggesting that voters needed to be more involved with the party so that it can become electable once more.

“With regard to business development, you need to have a very clear mission statement with clear variables, clear objectives and clear business goals. That is because, at the end of the day, we need to inspire people by inspiring the business community, showing them that this is a party full of creative ideas that can take Malta forward. Malta needs new technology – new smart technology – and rather than just talking about it, we need to be ready to use it ourselves.”

With regard to the role itself, Bartolo divulged that it will most likely also include finance but that all depends on the results of the deputy leadership election held yesterday.

“All my thoughts and ideas will then be approved when the team is chosen and the business plan begins to kick into action.”