Prime Minister Robert Abela has called for a "discussion" about reforming planning laws to effectively freeze developments until appeals processes are exhausted.
Robert Abela was previously a full-time top legal adviser to the Planning Authority (PA) so he knows what goes inside it. The PA generous retainer for Robert Abela's law firm more than doubled from €7,300 per month in 2013 to €17,110 in 2019.
In retrospect, the prime minister's law firm, Abela Advocates, was paid over €1.2m in that period for work that is now largely handled in-house by the PA. A spokesperson for Abela defended the fees, saying the very long hours of work carried out by the firm's lawyers "extended also to the weekends".
Now, donning his hat as prime minister, he calls for serious planning reforms when addressing a party activity to mark Workers' Day. He also alluded to development planning reforms, asking rhetorically whether construction projects should be allowed to proceed while they were still being contested. An ebullient prime minister further told the party faithful that his government will be working on building a stock of affordable apartments and it will announce more incentives to help people own their homes.
Apart from ensuring there is an affordable stock of apartments, he said that the government would also be strengthening schemes, such as equity sharing, a scheme by which the government partners up with individuals to own the place they live in. Other flies in the ointment which concern workers is the creeping inflation.
Certainly, the finance minister is squeezed between a rock and a hard place when faced with the problem how to bail out workers at AirMalta. Certainly, good wishes alone may not be enough to bring in the bacon. The country has an option to pay severance pay after discussions with the GWU, but many ask can it afford to resurrect the old business by forming yet another AirMalta legacy airline.
Certainly, AirMalta's (politically-appointed) administration is running on hot coals and may not last beyond the winter season. Workers may reminisce how the future destiny of AirMalta's workers compares with past attempts to bail out a bankrupt Enemalta (a main electricity State provider). This was partially privatised. Here, it sold one third of its assets for a cash injection by the State of China. Following a clandestine meeting with state dignitaries at Azerbaijan, saw Cabinet ministers sign an MoU to attract a private consortium which three years later build Electrogas burning LNG delivered by a floating supply vessel.
This move, anticipated tariff savings and in retrospect the Labour government in 2013, could, ahead of the completion of Electrogas, afford a generous 25% cut on electricity tariffs. A decade later, the Chamber of Commerce thinks that another cut is overdue. With hindsight, hands on heart, workers concur that such cost-cutting measures increased consumers' purchasing power and boosted business competitiveness.
As a developing country the emphasis was always to spend the highest amount possible to educate and train our workers to international standards. Yet an EU report found that "the performance of Maltese students in international assessments remains poor". Passes in foreign languages, Maths and science subjects are below EU average (previous results show only 20% passed maths "O" level). Notwithstanding this drawback, for a small island, with no natural resources located at the periphery of Europe, it is welcoming to read that it ranked as the ninth highest spender on education (per capita) among the EU28. Regrettably while spend on education is set to increase, yet the amount spent on research and development is a mere 0.7% of GPD (mostly on government salaries) which is the lowest in Europe (Finland reaches 3.3%).
The Opposition say a temporary state subsidy of fuel costs for Enemalta is only a paper thin move and decrees that the economy has started to de-accelerate with mounting deficits. In truth, on Labour Day, workers expected more investment in waste management, more cleanliness, upgrading the frail road infrastructure and combatting the phenomenon of acute shortages of skilled workers (mostly replaced by unskilled TCNs). Workers complain how rents have skyrocketed and are now beyond the means of low-income cohorts. The Chamber of Commerce notes how the menace of gentrification has mutated - just watch how rents in the past decade did skyrocket.
A generic mood seems to be for speculators (some brandishing close ties to Castille) to splash their egos building tall concrete and glass units in every corner of the island. This building frenzy came under heavy attack from environmentalists, Caritas and Church authorities lamenting that confidence in Dubai-ification can only be a symptom of wanton greed. In other countries, it led to the ruination of traditional core values and way of life. A recent study reveals inter alia, how speculators cream the top strata of profits whereas the multiplier effect is negligible. Sceptics retort that we are living in a time warp painting a fairy-tale picture about the feel-good factor but deep down, foundations are weak. At this juncture, can we assess if really and truly our economy is firing on all cylinders or is it suffering from such latent fragility?
Castille says it is not all doom and gloom as growth potential has been highlighted by favourable grades by rating agencies. It is no panacea to secure workers' future economic stability if only Malta Enterprise locates sufficient capital to build business accelerators that attract innovative industries. Few worry that to reach our targets a €260m tranche is needed annually. Having a mere 30 PhDs graduating annually is not enough to populate an ecosystem, let alone succeed to open the flood gates for unicorns to gate-crash MDIA in a genuine effort to exploit a potential nirvana for AI. Regardless of our tribulations and weaknesses, may we praise the Lord for showering us with a cornucopia of delights, seeing the country is truly prospering following two-and-a-half years of furlough subsidies which inevitably pushed the debt towards the €9bn mark (closer to 60% of GDP).
George Mangion is a senior partner at PKFMalta