The provision of services or products of high quality and reasonable price is essential to ensure our competitiveness as a nation and the awareness and implementation of standards is a vital expression of this. With this in mind, the Malta Standards Authority, for which the Competitiveness and Communications Ministry is directly responsible, is aiming to achieve these targets while promoting the concept that the embracing of standards by our various service providers is an added guaranteed quality certificate for the consumers who, being the end recipients, are able to consider, choose, decide and purchase.

Ensuring quality and efficiency is, therefore, the ultimate guarantee of increasing our level of competitiveness. One of the main achievements of the Malta Standards Authority has been the presentation of the certificate ISO 9001:2000 – an international standard that has been adopted locally by the Authority to enable it to certify Maltese companies and organisations.

During the presentation, Mr Galea emphasised that this reflects the government’s commitment to attain high goals within each and every sector while underlining the fact that human resources are the backbone of Malta’s development as a nation and that ensuring our competitiveness is the overall responsibility of each and every one of us.

Out of the E1.3 million provided by the European Union to assist the Malta Standards Authority in its capacity-building, E0.5 million has been used to purchase the equipment at the National Metrology Institute opened in April. Metrology is the science of measurement of objects in all scales, namely the fields of mass, dimension and temperature.

This facility for industry, underlined the minister, is yet another stepping stone towards the improving of Malta’s one-stop shop capability while positively aiding local industry in its efforts.

In addition to EU funding, the government has also contributed Lm93,000.

The establishment of the National Metrology Institute will help accomplish three principal objectives: providing local knowledge transfer in the various fundamental fields ventured into, reducing the overall national economic load for the acquisition of traceable measure in the same fields –a net cost saver for Maltese stakeholders in the medium to long term and facilitating the fulfilment of traceable calibration requirements for laboratories intending to become accredited.

The laboratories have been designed to be the scientific backbone for the legal metrology service, to provide traceable measure in the fundamental units selected and to realise a financially sustainable recurrent cost base.

Such a service, as claimed by a number of local clients, is an important cost detractor resulting in a 50 per cent cost saving because it eliminates the need to use foreign labs at much higher costs, including shipping and handling expenses. The labs have been appropriately designed to suit our economic size. In all aspects of the design and construction phases, the use of local technical expertise for the engineering designs and the carrying out of the work has lead to practical, cost effective, working solutions which have yielded very good reproducible and stable environmental conditions for the accomplishment of these high order measurements.

Recently, the competitiveness and communications minister launched the Eco-Management and Audit (EMAS) and the ECO-label schemes, which are voluntary schemes for those industrial or smaller-scale entities willing to commit themselves to evaluate and improve their environmental performance.

Within this context, the Malta Standards Authority has been identified as the EU EMAS competent body for Malta and has also been provided with E300,000 by the European Commission for the provision of training and the setting–up of the necessary infrastructure to ensure that these schemes are easily accessible .

During the presentation Mr Galea stressed the importance of such certifications, stating that with the ever-increasing public awareness of the importance of being environment-friendly, such standards will not only demonstrate our commitment to the environment, but can also provide domestic service providers, manufacturers and importers with a competitive edge over other businesses.

In July it is envisaged that the first ever laboratory in Malta will be obtaining accreditation from the Malta Standards Authority, which will provide the necessary confidence and credibility in its operation.

Also, the first food safety guides for retail outlets and catering establishments will be published shortly, helping small establishments in this sector meet the requirements of food safety legislation.

This is in attention to the introduction in the near future of a certification system for organic farming and agricultural products.