[WATCH] Malta Attractiveness Survey: half of foreign investors fail to find skilled workers from local market

Political leaders take the stage during EY survey conference

As Malta continues to steadily attract foreign direct investment (FDI), a survey conducted with top executives of over 100 foreign-owned companies continues to confirm the thirst for more skilled workers from the domestic markets.

Surveyed on the education and skill levels required to attract and retain FDI, 79% of the respondents believe that Malta requires “robust progress” in this area to remain attractive.

“Skills shortages and mismatches remain. Most respondents, 87%, manage to retain their specialized personnel. However, less than half (45%) manage to recruit staff with the required specialized skills from the local labour market,” EY’s 2016 Malta Attractiveness Survey found.

“More than half of respondents link their expansion plans to mitigating this skills gap. Practically, all respondents (95%) believe that the best policy to reduce the skills mismatch gap is to introduce skill sets for the “new” economy in schools.”

The demand for skilled labour continues to outstrip supply in a number of sectors: less than half of investors say that they are able to source the required skills locally. At 87%, specialized personnel retention is quite high. Heightening the challenge, the survey found, is that the level of education required by investors is on the rise, with 63% now requiring graduates with tertiary level education.

The respondents’ advise is mixing education with international work placements.

“95% believe that Malta should introduce skill sets for the ‘new’ economy, such as coding and robotics in schools. 87% believe that international work placements for Maltese nationals need to be encouraged.”

The foreign investors’ outlook of Malta is positive: 53% of companies are considering expanding their operations in Malta whilst 79% say they will still be operating in Malta in 10 years’ time. This marks an 8% increase over last year’s results.

Reconfirming the strength of the financial services sectors, the investors believe that iGaming (70%), ICT and Telecoms (50%), Fund Administration (46%) and Asset Management (46%) will be driving Malta’s growth in the future.

Reflecting a 2% increase over last year’s survey, 58% of respondents believe that Malta will be attractive in the next three years.

Malta has once again been gauged as an attractive start-up location, supported by incubators and accelerators can help to stimulate local entrepreneurship.

71% believe that Malta is keeping pace with regulatory changes in competing jurisdictions and 51% believe that the current legislative framework creates a competitive advantage in European and global markets. This index, however, is down 8% from 2015.