Malta’s new maritime policy has just been launched by the Parliamentary secretary for competitiveness Jose Herrera. This policy was much needed, particularly to act as a way of calibrating current Maltese laws so as to enable Malta to reach its industry goals.
The importance of this policy also lies in the fact that Malta’s maritime industry constitutes for around 9% of the country’s GDP and 5% of the population are reliant on this industry for their income. Therefore, the new policy will strive to further establish Malta’s maritime sector as an economic stronghold of the country, also based on the EU2020 guidelines.
The approach that will be taken is taking into account the present situation in order to further improve future prospects across four key pillars; food and aquaculture, logistics, services and energy. In formulating the policy, the government recognised the importance of collaboration between the public and private sector in order to be successful.
In their joint efforts, the public and private entities will be able to tackle the challenges presented to the Maltese industry, namely fragmentation and the need to adopt a more holistic approach, particularly in the face of the instability that has taken hold of the Mediterranean region.
For this reason, five different clusters will be decided by the private sector and different entities will be responsible for particular areas. No definite timeline when this will be decided has been as yet given.
The ultimate aim of the new maritime policy is that of pointing all the efforts towards establishing Malta as a centre of excellence that thrives on education, research and innovation. The plan is that of establishing a maritime agency for integrated government supervision of the industry that can also act as a one-stop shop and the first point of contact and entry into the industry on the Maltese Islands.
