At the Malta Developers Association’s Annual General Meeting earlier this week, President of the association Michael Stivala said that a slowdown in this sector would 'profoundly impact' the nation's economy.

Stivala said: "The MDA represents a workforce of over 30,000 individuals in direct employment. A slowdown or halt in our sector would profoundly impact the nation's economy."

Stivala elaborated that the construction industry contributes millions to the Maltese economy through taxes and VAT. "This revenue plays an indispensable role in vital sectors such as education and health, bolstering the well-being of all citizens," he said.

There is a clear attempt here to justify the construction industry and all of the consequences that it brings by putting it in monetary terms. 

His implication is that if the construction industry were to slow down and the pigeon holes which have come to characterise the local property market were to stop being built, or be built in lesser numbers, then suddenly less schools will be able to be run, or less services will be able to offered in the country’s health sector.

In a sense, Stivala is not wrong: the construction industry plays a major role in Malta’s economy, but that is precisely because of the economic system that the Labour government has perpetrated.

It was the Labour government which turned the Planning Authority into more of a developer’s rubber stamp than ever before, and placed more reliance on an industry characterised on unregulated, cheap, foreign labour.

As Labour’s economics of population foresaw the largest single-decade increase in the country’s population on record, and that in turn enabled the construction industry to – as Stivala’s predecessor put it – make hay while the sun shines.

Stivala mentioned that the construction industry is, through the revenue it brings, integral for bolstering the well-being of all citizens – but this ignores the areas where the construction industry is in actual fact the cause in the reduction of the quality of life of all citizens.

The negatives of the construction industry are well documented: take up of environmental land and open spaces, noise, dust, the uglification of Malta’s streetscapes. These all contribute to making the country less appealing, both to those who live in it and to those who visit.

The fact of the matter is, that at some point or another the construction industry will have to slow down.  Malta simply cannot take another 100 years of construction and development as mega-developer Joseph Portelli had said was possible.

This simple fact has to be a part of any government’s economic planning, and whatever shortfall there may be in a reduction of work in the construction sector has to be made up for through the creation of other – preferably more high quality – economic sectors.