The news that the company operating the Malta Freeport will be investing e130 million and increase its complement by 500 employees over the next five years is most welcome.

It is further confirmation that the government’s decision to pass over the administration of the Freeport to CMACGM was a good move that is now reaping the results. The Freeport is growing, and growing at a fast rate.

The fact that the number of units that will be handled at the Freeport will increase from the 1.9 million we have at present to three million in three years is a clear indication as to how much this is the case.

When the Freeport was opened it was said that one million units would have been a great target if it had been reached. Today, the Freeport has nearly doubled its work and is now aiming to tripling that amount.

Naturally, the Freeport has had to undergo a transformation since its early years. For one thing, the ships that call at Marsaxlokk Bay are not only growing in number, but growing in size too, and this means that dredging work has to be carried out to make the sea close to the terminal deeper than it is now to be able to accommodate the berthing of such vessels.

In this respect, the government will be paying up half of the e30 million that will be needed to carry out such work.

Added to this, the Freeport needs to have more space where the units are kept before they are transferred onto other ships. The present yard space will be expanded by a further 133,000 square metres to meet with the growing demand of transhipment services.

But probably the most important part of the investment will be in human resources, as the Freeport will be employing an additional 500 people. It is yet another investment that will see the creation of hundreds of jobs.

The investment at the Freeport is also an example that the concept of privatisation is a tool that the government has used well. In his address to journalists, Investment, Industry and IT Minister Austin Gatt said that the assets that have been shed by the government perform better under private administration.

This is a basic difference between the Nationalist Party and the Malta Labour Party. While the PN has a declared policy in favour of privatising government companies that can work better in private hands, the MLP seeks to hold on to all that is state-owned and keep them under its control.

And this is why each time the government announces a privatisation process the opposition’s reaction is always negative. It can be argued that the government might have shed public entities at a lower price than it could have negotiated, but it cannot be denied that the companies that have been privatised are now functioning better than they were before.

That the people have confidence in the privatisation programme the government has embarked upon can also be seen in the public response each time shares are offered to the people. The last such occasion was only this week when the Maltapost share offer was over-subscribed six times over in a few hours.

Minister Gatt was right to describe this as a vote of confidence in the company itself but, if seen in the wider perspective, in the country’s economic stability and progress. It is clear, he said, that the people have voted in the government’s policy with its money and against the opposition’s stand against privatisation.

The privatisation policy was also successful in that it reduced the number of people employed in the public sector and the subsidies to state-owned enterprises.