When presented with the Innova Foster Project recommendations, Minister for the Economy, Investment and Small Businesses Chris Cardona remarked that these complement the government’s current efforts for a national economic strategy for the further development of the local start-up ecosystem. This local action plan for start-ups will be coordinated through a foundation that is to be registered in the coming days.

The Innova Foster Report also identified Malta’s need for a formalised structure to act as major policy driver and create an integrated approach to start-up policy development. The report emanated from Malta Enterprise’s participation in the European Union’s Interreg Europe project that brings together seven public bodies or equivalent from all over Europe, which are all managing national, regional, or local policies that are related to SMEs’ growth and competitiveness and regional innovation capacity.

The first phase of the project started in January 2017 and wrapped up in December of last year, during which it focused on understanding the difficulties faced in the local start-up ecosystem and addressing these with a number of policy improvement recommendations that can be possibly financed by European Regional Development Fund. The project has combined interregional exchange visits, engagement with local and international stakeholders, and in-depth research to improve and support the growth of high-potential SMEs in Malta. The current second phase of the project will monitor the implementation of the recommendations made in the action plan.

Malta Enterprise explained how best practices, ideas, and experiences from Innova Foster have supported various initiatives to support start-ups set up, grow and consolidate their business. These include a host of support measures aimed as facilitating business start-ups such as B-start, Startup Finance and Startup Advance, as well as events such as the Startup Café.