Up until last week, whenever somebody mentioned Brazil, the first thoughts were the samba, Carnival and football. But now something else will come to mind when the name of what is the largest South American country crops up. With the World Cup and the Olympic Games to be staged in Brazil in 2014 and 2016 respectively, we are bound to hear it quite often.
When Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi announced, during a debate with Opposition Leader Joseph Muscat some time ago, that a multi-national Brazil-based company was to open up shop in Malta, he made his first mistake. At the time, he gave the impression that it would be some top-heavy investment in Malta which, with the rest of Europe passing through financial difficulties, was welcomed with open arms.
When the subject came up, almost innocuously, during the latest Xarabank debate between the two political leaders, Dr Gonzi made his second mistake. Following a jibe by Dr Muscat, the PM fell into the trap of replying that the Brazilian company had, indeed, come to Malta and had been operating for a year. Again, the impression given was that this had been a large venture, and we all started wondering what the PM was talking about. It would have been better had he come closer to the truth by saying that, yes, the company had come to Malta, but its operation was small and did not involve employing any Maltese workers. He could have made political mileage by saying that this company had considered Malta to be its nearest safe land after the Libya crisis.
The third mistake was then his reluctance to reveal the company’s name, in spite of the media’s insistence in the following days. True, he did so because he did not want to embroil it in the escalating political issue. Yet this reluctance was bound to backfire, as suspicions began to grow. In fact, backfire it quickly did when it became known that the company was Odebrecht which, as the PM had said, was indeed a large firm but whose operations in Malta were very limited. What had appeared to be a large-scale undertaking was, instead, an office in a shopping complex which, to make matters worse for the PM, was closing down.
As was to be expected, the Labour Party made – and is still making – a big deal out of the situation. They have used it to attack the government on its employment policies, once again trying to dent the credentials of an administration that managed to create so many employment opportunities while countries around us collapsed and introduced austerity measures to try to clean up the mess of their economic failures.
And this is where Labour is making its own mistake, because it could criticise the present government on many other issues, but when it comes to employment, the Labour Party should hold back and avoid the subject as much as possible. For one thing, its own track record of setting up disciplinary corps to reduce unemployment and the enrolment of 8,000 public service employees in the 1980s, and the hefty increase in the number of people without a job in just two years of PL administration in the 1990s – when the rest of Europe was flourishing, unlike the situation today – should make it hang its collective head in shame.
By pointing out one single occasion when the administration had let the country down, the PL is indirectly exposing all the other successes that have been achieved in employment. Let us not forget that these achievements were made when other countries in the EU were – and still are – experiencing record unemployment figures. In Spain and Greece, employment has risen to 25 per cent, with people protesting in the streets almost every day.
Conversely, here in Malta our unemployment rate is the third lowest in the EU, at just over six per cent; the number of people employed in the private sector has nearly doubled in the last 25 years (from 65,000 in 1987 to 110,000 today) and the average wage has risen by 4.5 per cent in the last 12 months alone. Added to this, according to Eurostat, tax on labour income in Malta, at 21.7 per cent, is 11.7 per cent lower than the EU average of 33.4 per cent, and the lowest in the EU by a wide margin. This means that, relatively speaking, Maltese employees’ take-home pay is higher than that of any of their European counterparts.
There has been a general transformation of the industrial sector, from one based on low-end manufacturing to high-end value-added services. Government companies that were a burden on the government and the economy, such as the dockyards, were closed down and its employees redeployed elsewhere or offered early retirement. What’s even better is that pensioners can now continue working without losing any of their pension (meaning that there are enough jobs for them, too) and that the number of women in employment has reached a record figure of 45 per cent. Still low, yes, compared with other countries, but we are quickly catching them up, considering that in the under-40 age bracket the percentage of women working is very close to that elsewhere.
Malta is also one of the very few countries in Europe where employment levels are higher today than they were at the start of the recession in 2008. This, and other positive factors in Malta’s economic situation, has led the European Commission to forecast good tidings for Malta. A one per cent economic growth for 2102 may seem very small but, when put into perspective – seeing that the economies of other countries are shrinking – then we should be pleased that we have come this far.
All this is proof that the government’s record in the employment sector cannot be criticised that much. The Labour Party will continue to use Brazilian innuendos and witty posters as a weapon for the next few weeks, when the election campaign officially kicks off, but it must remember all of the above when it tackles the subject.
[email protected]