Vision 2050: Not another shelved document!

It is not a rare instance in our country that studies and reports are commissioned, and once finalised, they are shelved to gather dust!

However, in the case of Vision 2050, not only has the government set up the necessary organisational infrastructure to start implementing this vision, but it has even gone as far as modelling the electoral manifesto in line with it. Once the election was over, the prime minister hit the ground running and called a meeting of the social partners within the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development (MCESD). During this meeting, the prime minister promised the social partners an update on progress achieved every six months.

It transpires that the implementation of Vision 2050, the electoral manifesto and the budget measures all fall under the same organisational unit within the Office of the Prime Minister. This is very promising indeed and ensures that all government departments, public entities and agencies will be prioritising and coordinating their actions in the same direction.

To implement Vision 2050 and the set of key performance indicators (KPIs) formulated for the next 10 years, it is imperative that all departments, public entities and agencies compile the necessary business plans in support of their respective KPIs. These plans need to define in detail how the KPIs will be implemented. Once drafted, the plans need to be approved by the respective ministries, the unit within the OPM and the Finance Ministry so that the necessary financial resources are allocated in the budgets to come.

Vision 2050 should not be a straitjacket for short-term solutions that require immediate attention. For example, if we take the traffic congestion problem, various short-term measures can be taken to limit the traffic flows during peak hours such as:

• Rescheduling of waste collection before or after peak hours

• Rescheduling of deliveries before or after peak hours

• Encouraging more parents to increase the take-up of free school transport

• Incentivising more workers, where possible, to work from home in both the public and private sectors. Incidentally, employee productivity should not be an issue if a performance management system is put into place in every entity, whether public or private.

These are but a few examples of how the traffic congestion during peak hours can be alleviated until the government’s long-term National Transport Strategy 2050 – Malta in Motion, is implemented.

One of the main objectives of Vision 2050 is to fine-tune the economic model and focus on high value-added activities which are not labour intensive. If we take the tourism sector as an example, the focus now should be more on attracting quality tourists with a higher spending potential.

Our country has a lot to offer besides the sun and the sea. To do this, it is imperative to start upgrading the tourism product and set higher standards across the board and ensure that these standards are enforced. Higher standards translate into better quality tourists with more spending potential. This must be done in a coordinated approach with other ministries and public entities, since the Tourism Ministry and the MTA cannot do it alone.

One other benefit of focusing more on quality tourists is that there will be less strain on resources, such as infrastructure in general, and at the same time there will be less dependency on the labour resources required. This is also the way forward to start managing the dependency on foreign labour without affecting the economy negatively.

As for foreign workers, it is imperative that they are treated as human beings. Foreign workers who entered our country legally and have a pending job appeal should be allowed to work until their appeal is heard. This is being fair and just to them and, at the same time, benefiting our country in many more ways than one. One such benefit is reducing the demand for new foreign workers while the appeal is pending!

Unfortunately, some market sectors of our economy have reached a saturation point; here the risk is that if we allow more operators to enter the market, standards will fall. What sense does it make, for example, to have more supermarkets, in some cases side by side? People won’t be spending more on food simply because there are more supermarkets.

Here we need a clear policy that limits the opening of new supermarkets in certain localities, like what we have for the opening of new pharmacies. Such a policy should also help the local groceries that are found in many localities to remain competitive.

There are other sectors of the economy that have also reached a saturation point and are seeing their competitiveness being eroded. This is attributed to several reasons, such as overcapacity, which comes about due to a lack of regulation and low standards to enter the market.

Raising standards is one way of improving the quality of a product or service, making it more competitive and able to charge a premium. This strategy can be adopted for various sectors of the economy and is also in line with the main objectives of Vision 2050, which is the fine-tuning of our economic model, where needed, to high-value economic activities. While some may consider raising standards a barrier to entry in the market, others may argue that letting the market control itself, without regulation or standards, is prone to the law of the jungle. And this is why raising standards, regulation and enforcement are crucial, especially for a small market like ours.