It was announced that the Bank of Valletta needs to change the business model by which it has organized borrowing and lending. It also needs to maintain a higher capital reserve – meaning funds it will have to hold at the ready, and which it therefore must keep “in house”, without doing business with them. So they will make no money for the Bank.

The volume of new reserves needed, we are told, could reach the two hundred million euro level.

All this will mean that till the Bank has seen through the change in its operating framework, and till it has amassed the scores of million euros newly needed as reserves, it will see the profits that it used to make, drop.

Not least, as a consequence, the Bank’s appetite to lend could diminish. I guess small and medium enterprises will experience most this effect.

The Bank explains that the changes envisaged are made necessary by the new prudential rules introduced as part of the European banking union which is being set up.

Yet at meetings of the European Parliament’s Economic and Financial Committee of which I am a member, we received directors from the governing structures of the emerging banking union. They explained to us how the new rules should not serve to brake economic activity.

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Labour costs

Once again, certain trends in Malta’s economic performance are diverging strongly from what is going on in the rest of Europe. It’s a puzzle.

One could just point to the economic growth and inflation indicators. But now a new factor has emerged. I do not remember having noticed it before: the rate of change in labour unit costs.

In most European countries, those costs are rising. In Malta, they are declining... something that has been a long time coming.

What is giving rise to this curious development, since at present, the Maltese economy is trundling well in advance of the rest of Europe?

Is it all due to precarious employment, by means of which job rates are at a discount?

Or is it due to the presence of foreign workers, whether from Europe or eslsewhere, who being still are paid at a discount?

Or is there some other reason?

It would be useful to know how we stand on the matter.

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Showing where

Of all the instruments you find in a modern car, one is least used in Malta – that which shows the direction in which a driver needs to go, left or right, on his side or that of his/her passenger.

Maltese drivers seem to have concluded that they absolutely do not need to give any indication of where they would like to go. If they do that, they would be allowing an invasion of their privacy (!).

It’s a big mistake.

The failure to indicate direction when driving, is adding further to the uncertainties that are proliferating in our roads. Use of car indicators has become increasingly important in the confusion and jams that day in day out plague street traffic.

Most drivers do not appreciate this elementary consideration. So, they are helping to increase the probability of a collision, even when cars are being driven at low speed.