Category: Archive – 2011

As one of the
fastest growing domestic markets in the world, the Chinese economy presents
attractive opportunities for European SMEs looking to expand their business to
reap additional profits and win new customers. To take advantage of these
opportunities, you need to be well prepared in terms of market intelligence and
the protection of your company's intellectual property assets.

 This event will be held on :

28th
November 2013, Valletta, Malta

It is in this
context that you are invited to a seminar for Maltese SMEs that are developing
their business in China. You will receive practical advice from experts and
have the opportunity to take part in one-to-one consultation session for
business and legal advice tailored to your needs.

If you
would like to receive confidential one-to-one advice about your business in
China, sign up for a free, 20-minute consultation with the experts of the China
IPR SME Helpdesk or the EU SME Centre. To ensure you have a chance to meet with
the experts, please book your session in advance by indicating your interest
when you register. Please specify the nature of your question and the expert
you wish to book a session with. The one-to-one consultations are open to
European SMEs on a first-come, first-served basis. Any information you provide
to the China IPR SME Helpdesk and the EU SME Centre will be treated as
confidential.

Further
information can be found: www.maltaenterprise.com,
www.enterprise-europemalta.com

 Why did you become an entrepreneur?  It's a family business

How have you come to chose your line of business? We started by displaying a few souvenirs

Where did you go on your last holiday?

England and Italy

If you could chose to be someone famous who would you be?

Mahatma Ghandi- as he projects harmony and peace

Yesterday GRTU attended the press conference organised by the Ministry for Finance the Economy Investment, where Minister Tonio Fenech announced the Business First initiative which is essentially a one-stop-shop for businesses which will open its doors on the 23^rd of January next year.

During the press conference Hon Minister Fenech stated that this is a service businesses have for long been requesting and that Government intends to win the recession by providing businesses with better support. The setting up of a one stop shop, which is a point of single contact, falls also under the obligations of the Services Directive.

Mr Alan Camilleri, Chairman of Malta Enterprise, said that the service will be operated by Malta Enterprise and its services will range from advice on setting up of businesses to the formalities of registering a company, VAT registration, applications for water and electricity, employment forms and applications for business licences. He also said that in order to create a service which is as responsible as possible to the needs of enterprises, SMEs especially, Malta Enterprise conducted a survey with businesses of different sizes and from a variety of sectors.

From the survey it transpired that the 3 departments, VAT, TAX, Enemalta, with which businesses deal with and cover 80% of total interaction with authorities. The survey also showed that businesses find it complicated to discover what forms they require, from where to get access to them, acquire the whole, clear and truthful information, filling in and submitting applications. The businesses said that from this new service they would expect a more efficient and less bureaucratic service, help and advice and they also suggested the best times during which the service would be offered.

Through this service Government will provide a centralised service and commits itself to give a reply within a maximum of 10 days. Government will have trained and professional individuals providing the service and has entered into agreements of cooperation with the various Public departments and authorities in order to have their full cooperation. At Business First, the client will be seen as a partner for economic growth.

Amongst the services offered will be: Registration of a company, initiation and termination of employment, TAX, VAT, trading licences, water and electricity, employment licences, visas and residence permits.

There will be a helpline: 144 and the doors will be open three times a week between 08.00 – 17.00 and twice a week till 19.00. Business First will be occupying part of the old St Luke's Hospital premises. The service will be provided free of charge but all charges and fees related to applications and other which were already in place within the other departments are still applicable but no cash payments will be accepted.

Mr Camilleri also said that Government will guarantee the quality of the service through customer satisfaction surveys and the publishing of a scoreboard.

GRTU Director General Vincent Farrugia has today publicly presented GRTU's proposals and strategy for Budget 2012. Mr Farrugia gave an introduction stating what the Maltese economy needs to do with a set of proposals aim at reducing public deficit, increase productivity, use resources which are unutilised, increase capital investment and make the economy grow. GRTU presented proposals covering different aspects:

Encourage capital investment in the infrastructure

• Create new opportunities for investment in the harbours, manufacturing, logistics operations, green jobs, environmental projects and in areas related to the knowledge based economy.

New Investment in the small enterprise sector

• Small Enterprise Finance Guarantee Scheme

– 50,000,000 fund, Special project bonds, Only for loan guarantees, To facilitate additional commercial lending, repayable over 3 months – 10 years

In support of Localities

• Back office work
• Re-utilise buildings

– Tax incentives and grants for more office space, Specialised homes for the elderly, Lodging of tourists

In support of Localities: Valletta

• Revision of the CVA
• Parking

– Elimination of parking reserved for Parliamentarians; Change green to more blue and blue to more white parking spaces

• Special tax reduction for Valletta based businesses

Families and young couples

• Property tax holiday for the purchases of properties by home owners and young families
• Special loan guarantee to cover up to 50% of the security requested

Reducing private debt

• Cause financial institutions and other credit awarding facilities to promote a reduction in the costs of credit to households

Recruitment Assistance

• Most ETC schemes are bureaucratic in their implementation and reimbursement procedure
• EU nationals employed on a temporary bases are immediately registered and would suffer a 15-20% reduction in wage as payment on income tax and social contribution

Increasing female participation in the labour market

• Child care benefits should be extended to cover child minding in a home setting
• Revise child care centre standards which are making it impossible for anyone to set up a child care centre
• Tax credit scheme extended to women who need elderly care workers to assist in care of dependents

Better Packaging Directive Enforcement

• Setting up of a Producer Responsibility Enforcement Committee with the direct involvement of Authorised Schemes

Implementation of the WEEE Directive

• Implementation would mean a reduction in €8m in Government revenue but also placing an onus on producers to work with authorised schemes

Creation of Green Jobs

• ETC/MCAST should set up courses free of charge
• When fiscal incentive to entrepreneurs in favour of the green economy are put in place it is imp the workers to affect the relevant trades are available
• Regeneration of vacant property a guarantee of demand for Green Jobs
• Stamp duty reduction on purchases of property vacant for more than 5 yrs to be regenerated in line with the EPB Directive

Improving energy efficiency

• Carry out swift assessment of the untapped potential in terms of energy efficiency in industry, to be able to draw up further relevant measures
• Fund for loans to improve energy efficiency: Capital purchases of equipment only; Unsecured, interest free, repayable over 5 years; Up to 50,000

Lower emissions

• Standard Pas 2050 for businesses to be able to carry out a Carbon Reduction Label, leading to valuable energy and cost saving opportunities to businesses
• Grant to study the possibility of a logistical distribution centre for goods in Valletta, Sliema, Hamrun
• Drop registration tax on powered two wheel vehicles not exceeding 250cc

Utility services

• Enemalta should provide a price tariff that would cover one year and two years of consumption
• Introduce a 10% price reduction if bill is prepaid on an average use for the last two years
• 50% reduction for three phase applications if it is an SME employing more than 1 person within its first year or expanding operations
• 50% reduction on three phase and single phase meters rents
• Rent of the water meter for SMEs should be totally abolished and water rate per cubic meter increased so that users pay according to the use

Waste management strategy

• Extension of an exemption for reduced rates of payment for first registration of waste management vehicles that are installed with a built in weighing facilities
• The devolution of WasteServ MRF Operations to Private Industry for those waste streams that are catered for by Private Industry. This includes the operation and running of the MRF Facility at present. This will be the first step towards the privatisation of WasteServ Malta Limited

Level Playing field

• Better monitoring of what products enter the Maltese market for a commercial purpose
• Creation of an enforcement authority under the newly established consolidated VAT, Customs and Inland Revenue, responsible to ensure a fair and level playing field

Pension Reform

• Rise in retirement age and revisable every 5 years according to set formula
• Encourage flexible retirement
• Creation of a National Pensions fund

– Supported by means: profits of state investments, privatisation, Government assets, etc…

– Directly linked to the individual

– A basic pension and an additional set of higher priced options

– Administered by board of trustees and direct Government responsibility, not private

– Same rules governing private enterprise

Extending the POYC

• Public Private Partnership with pharmacy owners and incentives to build new modern primary health care services

Vincent Farrugia, GRTU's Director General and EESC Maltese Employers' representative, was one of the speakers on behalf of EESC during this special EESC ECO and SOC section meetings that discussed: "Overcoming the crises – towards a policy programme for sustainable recovery". The main keynote speaker was Klause Regling. Throughout the 30 year period up to the bankruptcy of Lehman, most Governments and Central Banks acknowledged only one official objective for macroeconomic policy: to control inflation.

Only one reasonable criterion for judging the success of macroeconomic policy seams to remain: price stability. In the post/recession period that has already started so very badly, these polarized dichotomies between the monetary and the real economy, between responsibilities for inflation and unemployment, between the aims of micro economies and macro economies no longer make sense. All economic objectives will need to be juggled in a more complex manner.

Central banks need to concentrate on nominal GDP, the total spending in the economy, taking both inflation and real economic growth into account. They should continue to strive to achieve low inflation but also highlight adequate levels of economical growth and employment and also ensure reasonable credit growth and will have to collaborate with authorities in other major economies to ensure exchange rates and trade imbalances do not get too far out of line.

Governments must have the power to enable them to accept much wider responsibilities for ensuring growth. Growth must be internationally balanced with much more emphasis on exports in the USA, Britain and the periphery of Europe and on higher consumption in China, Germany and Japan. Governments will have to accept this new-found responsibility for comprehensive economic management while setting public spending and borrowing on a rapidly declining path. This is a difficult task, but the age of easy politics blind dependence on the markets is over.

After the shock of the recession action has taken a more interventionist approach never dreamt before, and economic growth began to rise. Action was however reduced thinking they have done enough. The trouble soon came back. By the beginning of 2010 as the USA reported its strongest economic growth since 2003, as financial markets recovered and as banks allegedly on the point of failure suddenly announced record profits even die-hard skeptics believed the worst was over. But the serious problems remain.

With Governments everywhere focused on stimulating growth and reducing unemployment with the specter of stagflation resurfacing. The answer is economic governance not just at European level but internationally. The emergence of G20 is already making a difference. Should Government act as they revive their true role and responsibilities and as economic recovery becomes established, unemployment falls and output gaps narrow around the world, by later, half of this decade, inflation will again become a concern. Monetary expansion on its own is not a cause of inflation, the same way that gravity on its own cannot cause planes falling out of the sky.

Today we have a world economy overbalanced with excess capacity in almost every industry and with millions of unemployed workers who are eager to work for competitive wages. Monetary expansion should not therefore cause concern on inflation. Low interest rates and the growth of credit should instead create real economic growth until excess capacity and unemployment are reduced to their long-run average levels – a process that should take 3 to 5 years in the most optimistic global growth forecasts and considerably longer than a decade according to the more common assumption of the normal of tenant of subdued growth that reigned when targeted inflation was the main goal of macroeconomic policies.

Stagflation is possible not in a properly functioning market economy but where competition is thwarted and excess supply is blocked by barriers and cartels of various kinds. In the late 1960s and 1970s at least 4 such barriers to competition rose high, phenomena that are not likely to recur in the decade ahead.

Chasing GDP growth results in Lower Living Standards. The financial crisis profoundly altered politics around the world. It convinced voters of the need for competent administration and regulation but also spread terror about the costs of governments and their debts and created tremendous confusion about the capability of financiers, regulators and politicians, past and present. In just a few years we have seen a genuine revolution in the mentalities. For a first the heads of government of the 20 largest economies are deciding on measures that must be taken to combat a world crisis. Moreover, the crisis had proved that the world could not rely blindly on market solutions.

The European Union must act and appear to act as a trade union with strong economic governance in line with the new economic strategies that should not only get us out of the crisis but move us forward to sustainable growth as defined in our 2020 strategy and beyond. The future that beckons depends on how determinedly we accept our responsibilities today.

TCAs: no need
for new EU initiatives in the field, say SMEs – UEAPME replied to a public consultation
by the European Commission on the future of transnational company agreements
(TCAs), i.e. cross-border agreements covering working and employment conditions
and/or relations between employers and workers or their representatives.
According to UEAPME, there is no need for further initiatives on this issue at
European level.

Competition:
Commission launches study on choice and innovation in food sector

The European Commission is launching a
study to assess the impact of recent developments in the European retail sector
on consumers. Following calls by stakeholders, the Commission will examine,
whether increased concentration and the use of own brand (private label)
products have hampered choice and innovation in the European food sector. The
Commission invites interested expert researchers to submit proposals to its
call for tenders by 14 February 2013. The final report of the study is expected
by the end of 2013. The Commission will evaluate the results and may put
forward proposals to improve the functioning of European food markets.

Commission Vice President in charge of
competition policy Joaquín Almunia said: "Many stakeholders argue that
European food markets do not work well, but we need more comprehensive data to
assess these claims. Therefore, we have decided to carry out a detailed study
to find out whether European consumers enjoy sufficient choice and innovative
products adapted to their needs when buying food. This will help us determine
how to best solve these problems."

The retail sector has become more
concentrated over the last years. In parallel, retailers have introduced their
own brands, which are increasingly successful. 
The European Parliament, consumer organisations, national competition
authorities and food producers claim that this limits investment and variety in
the food supply chain, ultimately to the detriment of the final consumer. 

Alcohol-Mapping

EU strategy on alcohol: the
EAHC/2012/Health/06 contract concerning "Action to prevent and reduce harm from
alcohol" was awarded and will be implemented in 2013. The purpose of the
contract is to contribute to the protection of children and young people from
harmful alcohol consumption by collecting and disseminating good practice. 

Lot 1: Good practice in Member States (by
MS authorities) to enhance compliance with minimum age limits for selling or
serving alcoholic beverages. Examples of good practices will be collected and
the exchange and dissemination of good practices will be facilitated.

Lot 2: State of play in the use of
alcoholic beverage labels to inform consumers about health aspects. The
objective is to contribute to a comprehensive picture through fieldwork to
gather representative samples of alcoholic beverage packages from retail
outlets across the Member States to assess the effectiveness of health-related
information provided on them.

The contract for lot 2 was awarded to
Significant GfK (ttp://www.gfk.be).

Reduction of Public Deficit -At 68% of GDP Malta's Public Deficit is too high for an open economy like Malta, Economic imbalances, both internally and externally are worse than for other economies with large internal markets. Government should in Budget 2012 take serious action to reduce the deficit in Public Financing.

• Productivity

GRTU supports all schemes that improve productivity. Productivity is the result of greater and higher quality investment in all sectors, increased labour economic contribution and investment in new technological systems, innovation and better management of resources.

• Unutilized Resources

The Maltese economy still suffers from excess capacity and oversupply in various areas. The total result is that important resources like land, human capital and financial resources remain idle or unutilized and thus fail to contribute to GDP Growth.

• Capital Investment

Government should not in Budget 2012 increase current expenditure not only because of its negative impact on the deficit in Public Finances but also to avoid unnecessary inflationary increases. Government should reduce expenditure on non-productive sectors but heavily increase capital expenditure on capital investments. The Capital Budget as planned for the next 3 years should grow substantially and be used as a tool to further strengthen the infrastructure and the enhancement of Malta's potential as a modern knowledge-based economy.

• Growth

GRTU expects a smart budget that emphasizes capital investment, better utilization of economic resources, new incentives to encourage and promote the growth of internal economy through greater private sector capital investment incentives and incentives to enlarge mobility of labour towards more productive sectors, reduction of costs for enterprise and the promotion of new financial instruments that encourages the better utilization of financial resources held by the banks and by the private sector.

MEPs have given their green light to a free trade agreement that will allow for duty free imports into the EU of Palestinian agricultural products, processed agricultural products, as well as fish and other fisheries products. Only a limited number of fresh fruit and vegetables will remain under the entry price system (minimum entry price for imports). Agricultural and processed agricultural goods amount to 70 % of total imports from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

On 19 October 2011, the European Commission DG Trade published the 8th Report on potentially trade restrictive measures adopted by third countries in the aftermath of the economic crisis. The Report's findings call again for close attention to the recent wave of trade restrictions adopted in particular by emerging economies over the past twelve months.

The analysis online:

(http://ec.europa.eu/trade/maintenance/html/press-release-743-458_en.htm),

It paints a worrisome picture, indicating the constantly growing number of new potentially trade restrictive measures increasingly becoming part of targeted industrialization policies by third countries. In addition to their individual distortive potential, many measures have a mutually reinforcing character, being part and parcel of the same industrialisation package.

The increasing trade restrictive measures pose a systemic market access problem, as many measures introduced during the economic crisis have remained in force, and are frequently prolonged. Moreover, the number of measures that lapsed in the past twelve months remains unsatisfying if compared to the emergence of new restrictions.

All in all, the Commission notes 424 measures remaining in force or planned by third countries and G20 economies in particular. In the past twelve months, 131 new measures have been noted. Only 17% of all measures have been removed so far (76), with 40 measures eliminated or lapsing in the past year.

The Commission remains particularly concerned about measures adopted in the area of government procurement as well as by export duties and other export restrictions.

The WTO report on trade-related developments in G20 countries, issued on 26 October 2011, confirms these worrisome trends, admitting that some countries, instead of fulfilling the Washington commitment, pursue a policy in the opposite direction. The WTO figures on removal of measures in place (19%) coincide with those of the EU (17%).

These findings clearly indicate insufficient respect by G20 countries for their standstill and roll-back commitments consistently made since the onset of the economic crisis. The upcoming G20 summit in Cannes on 3-4 November provides another opportunity to highlight the importance of resisting protectionist tendencies among the major economies.