Today is the New Year and the start of a new decade. Some of the challenges we will face in 2010, we have seen before and will see again. But some of those challenges are new.

2009 was not such a good year. For the first few years of our membership of the European Union, things were good. The world economy was booming, credit was easy to come by, gadgets got more complex, we recreated (albeit for a nanosecond) the start of the universe and life just bounded forward.

For us, here in Malta, the massive feel good effect was intoxicating. Before we were just an island tourist destination with a decent standard of living, but from 2004 we were mixing it up with the best. Our salaries increased, business poured into Malta, our infrastructure improved, the islands aesthetically improved, the choice on the shelves had never been seen before... We were, just for a couple of years, riding higher than we had ever ridden before. Then, the crash came in November 2008.

The GonziPN campaign saw it coming and in the election campaign of March 2008, we were told to expect “challenging times because the weather on the horizon is not looking that good”.

But no one, the Prime Minister included, could imagine the extent of the global crunch. Not one country in the world was able to brace against the effects it would have on our economies, and more importantly our lives. Make no mistake, 2009 was the year of change. Not change because of nuclear disarmament pledges, creation of green energy or wonder drugs. It is change that we brought about in a different way. Our ant hive mentality of produce, produce, produce and build, build, build and our greed brought it about.

It seems that the larger countries are starting to emerge from recession and are now putting together their exit strategies. But for us, here on this tiny island, it is different. Because we have no real impact on the international market, we were late in and will be late out. Thank Heavens our financial institutions were robust, otherwise things would be a lot worse.

But we still got through the year and must now look forward. We are in a very odd situation. While others had a short sharp fall, we seem to have had to go down a winding slippery slope to hit recession. The government has had a year to get used to it and take mitigation measures slowly (perhaps a good thing, it allows focus), but now we must forge ahead into a new decade.

If we do not do our level best to regain that competitive edge which we had before the crash, we will fall further by the wayside. It is time for the government to find a way to look at proper recovery – an exit strategy. And it must be implemented now, sooner rather than later. We hope that the party in government can sort out its internal troubles and concentrate on the task at hand. The ability is there, the focus is not.

All in all it has been a hellish year. Even if we do not look at the economy, it has been a pretty bleak year with drugs, murders and manslaughter on our roads. Cliché, but it surely cannot be any worse next year. We are confident that as has happened before, the country and it’s people will rise to the challenges and turn them into opportunities.

Standard Publications takes this opportunity to wish all our readers a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous 2010.