Small businesses are increasingly feeling the pressures of the big supermarkets on their affairs. It is difficult to see how they can compete unless they manage to identify and develop niches of activity where the big players are not so present (as of now). Like for instance the home delivery of sales to elderly people living in the neighbourhood of a shop. But here too, as the number of older people who are familiar with the internet increases, the greater will the presence of the big players spread.
Nobody took any account of this kind of scenario when Malta became a full member of the EU. A (substantial?) part of the foreign investment attracted to the island came dedicated to the building of supermarkets by European retail giants with Lidl at the forefront.
True, some Maltese investors and merchants managed to compete, supermarket on supermarket. But foreign entrepreneurs have undeniably become the most important agent in the market. And small businesses (which we used to call the “self employed” or “shopkeepers” in the past) have become the underdogs.
The same also happened in Spain and Portugal following their accession to the EU.
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DEBATE
It would be a great pity if the debate (but can one call it that?) about a future tourism strategy ends up generating more heat than light. There can be little doubt that we are reaching the limit in tourism numbers of what this country can absorb without becoming saturated.
All seem to accept that we need to see how to concentrate increasingly on catering for “quality” tourists who leave more money and value added in their wake and not keep chasing numbers. Few go on to specify exactly how this should be done.
The tourism minister was reported to have said that while quality is a strategic necessity, quantity cannot just be dumped. He had a point. But it does not seem that he then explained further how quantity and quality could be kept in coherence with each other given how things stand at present.
I do not think such matters should be left pending. Tourism has become the most important economic resource of this country.
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THE MEDIA AND BOOKS
Recently, the editorial of an influential daily made for comic reading as it complained about how books are so unpopular in Malta and how only very few people like to read. It made one and all responsible for this... except the media!
For just like the rest of our society, newspapers (or what’s left of them) online included, rarely publish material that covers books and reading, even by comparison with other cultural sectors like the visual arts where they run full pages carrying news and critiques – and well done for that. But about books and literature, next to nothing.
Indeed this makes for a big contrast with European newspapers and media outlets (which are also facing economic challenges similar to those of local newspapers). On an ongoing basis, they regularly feature updates, news, critiques and polemics about literature and books which serve to stimulate a popular interest.