A new Training Manual was launched at MCAST recently during a two day conference which was held as part of the NISSOS project. The NISSOS (Island in Greek) project is a three year, EU – Leonardo da Vinci project that seeks to distil ‘best practices’ from successful, locally owned, export-oriented manufacturing SME’s in small islands and translating these lessons including an educational resource kit, a text and a CD-Rom. Speaking at the launch, Education and Employment Minister Louis Galea said that this project was an excellent opportunity for Malta to get involved and also to create an important tool for local SME’s and those in the participating countries.

Minister Galea said that it is now common knowledge that small and medium sized enterprises are very important contributors to economic growth. He said that in small islands, SME’s play an even more pronounced role, since the typical average enterprise size is even smaller than elsewhere.

“Products with cutting-edge technology intended mainly for export that are developed by a small-island based business in a small scale operation can only be described as exceptional and that is what the NISSOS project has been aiming to find, exceptional best practices from which the participating countries can learn valuable lessons from”, Dr Galea added.

Parliamentary Secretary Edwin Vassallo said that the government intends to facilitate the take up of EU funding programmes by at least 300 SME’s.

He said that entrepreneurship will start to be taken up in primary schools with a pilot project also in the offing where basic information on business will be offered to students in their last year of secondary schools.

Mr Vassallo said that we must change our traditional mindset and said that the government had a number of other lifelong learning projects in the pipeline. The maxim of profitable business and sustainable growth was the core statement for the future, he added.