This book is the last of the Occasional Papers that APS Bank published as long as Professor Delia was its chairman. Then the series seems to have been discontinued.

It is true that by and large the entire series of 11 books were all written by Prof. Delia, three as editor, apart from 10 volumes containing the proceedings of APS Bank seminars, but I still hold it is a great pity that such initiatives have been discontinued. Bank of Valletta too used to publish a series of books containing occasional papers but ever since they went online I have lost touch with them.

There is, in general, a dearth of articles and information about the local economy, especially when you subtract the articles written as part of a thesis or articles plugging this or that commodity. Others then write with partisan intentions at the back of their minds.

Articles based on facts and without partisan bias are notable only for their absence. This book goes a small way to redress the imbalance.

It focuses on data from roughly 2010 to 2016. In other words, though this may not have been the author's specific intention, it includes years spent under the Gonzi PN administration and the first years of the Muscat PL administration.

The data the book works upon are data for the real economy while many times the data used in partisan debate focus mainly on what is planned or hoped for in the future.

The book seems to take 2014 as its base year. It falls midway between the PN years and the PL ones. Malta had joined the EU in 2004 and the Euro four years later. Both decisions had been hotly contested.

With 2014 as the base year, the author cannot foresee the events that came after that - from the Libyan crisis to Covid. Hence his analysis has to be judged against this background, this gap.

Nevertheless, some conclusions that the author arrives at can be significant. Even then, it was already being felt that the 30-40-year-old cohorts face the challenge to show that the past decades have not cloned a managerial class that lives on repetition. There are too many unknowns in the real world, there is no readymade, off the shelf set of policies on which to build the future.

Secondly, the Maltese population is ageing fast.

Thirdly, institutions in Malta are suffering from fatigue and content themselves with merely collecting data rather than intervening to modify what's going wrong. The risk is that a false sense of control and security was generated.

At the same time, there has been an increased perception that corruption is rampant in Maltese society and that politicians are not to be trusted.

While the higher rates of income tax were reduced to 35% in 1992, higher income tax rebates were offered to those foreigners who carried out their operations from Malta.

The Maltese economy has performed a full circle in terms of migration. In the post-war years the Maltese population was young but work opportunities were restricted to the traditional trades which could not absorb the new entrants to the labour market. So for three decades - 1948 to the mid-1970s - its income and wealth creation was heavily supported by a massive outflow of subsidised migration. Malta is now resorting to immigration to support its economic growth. The population pyramid today represents an inversion of the one registered in 1948.

The swing in policy formation and implementation from one party to another influences differently the way upcoming cohorts think and plan their various involvement, creating specific market structures to exploit the possibilities offered by the new technologies.

Now, to get down to figures, the Maltese economy grew from €6.6bn in 2010 to €8.8bn in 2015. Gainful employment stood at 185,000 in 2015 from a labour supply of 195,000. Even then it was remarked that there was a rising number of immigrants (this trend accelerated in later years).

Data on Harmonised Competitive Indices suggested a deterioration of Malta's competitive position on the international markets. At the same time, the proportion of those considered relatively poor continued to rise over time. Among these, the share of the elderly, aged 65 years and over increased from 14.9% in 2013 to 16.9% in 2014.

There is much more in this closely-argued book especially with regards to the EU (the Brexit referendum had just taken place and people were more concerned about the possible break-up of the Union than they are now, given the shambles in the UK).

The conclusion the author reaches may not be shared by all readers today, with hindsight: "The future of the EU, the continuous re-invention of the Maltese economy and the revival of personal aspirations for a better life in a supportive social context: these are taxing objectives. But they are definitely worth pursuing under one proviso. Those 400,000 Maltese must not underestimate the challenges ahead or their own limitations."