Some time ago, the World Economic Forum published its annual Competitiveness Index, which is eagerly awaited by many countries and enterprises. This was published in full by this paper but did not get enough airing in our country, whereas it gets a lot in other countries.

Last week, this paper also published the EU Industrial Competitiveness Scoreboard which said that Malta is a ‘moderate performer’.

The details in the two scoreboards tally with each other.

Malta is particularly weak in showing the attractiveness of its business environment, has a lacklustre showing as regards innovation and on top of it all has the EU’s third-highest electricity prices for industry.

As happened in previous years (from which there was little or no improvement) , Malta was placed in the middle tier of the EU’s competitiveness index, along with countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Slovenia among the ‘moderate cluster’.

In these and related issues, the analysis is known and has been so for many years, and the solutions too. But the proposed solutions have always taken far too long to get actioned and, as a result, any improvement was long in coming and our competitor countries, well, some of them, got off faster than us.

This does not mean that nothing good or constructive has been done. It means however that by not experiencing a real burst forward the widespread expectations of people in Malta that with EU membership things were going to be improved have been largely disattended.

There is, obviously, a political or partisan subtext to all this, but on this paper we prefer to be positive and proactive. Malta really needs a burst of speed to bring it up to par. Things that have been long awaiting changing must be changed, obstacles to growth must be tackled and removed and faster growth fostered. For far too long, the drivers of growth, such as they were, consisted of initiatives spurred on by EU funds.

In this regard, one of course requires a wider analysis, but after all these years it would seem this engine of growth has run its course. It has brought some improvement in some areas but some improvements as a consequence of it, such as roadworks of no real utility to most of the Maltese, would have been far better spent in other areas.

Nor has it seemed to have spawned a spurt of growth of R&D and innovation and even today these sectors are riven by personality clashes and turf wars.

Whatever, this stream of ready funds is now running quite dry, also because the Maltese GDP rate is now beyond the 75% benchmark for EU structural funds.

So we now must try and do things more strategically. Our general aim should be to increase our GDP growth, our competitiveness, our standard of living and most important to improve our environment. Let us, at least theoretically, assume we will not get any EU funds for this, so everyone will have a level playing field.

We must ask ourselves what needs to be done, prioritise the needs and then take real, concrete, quantifiable, action.

And we must continue to monitor such indexes week after week, month after month, to check our progress. Or lack of.