Last Updated on Thursday, 24 October, 2024 at 9:27 am by Andre Camilleri
Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States is quoted as once saying that “Vision without execution is hallucination”. I say this as in the past days we heard that the government has embarked on having a new economic vision document, Malta Vision 2050, to be drawn up by end Q1 2025.
However, we have already been here. In 2021 an economic vision document was drawn up, entitled Malta’s Economic Vision 2021-2031 – A future proof Malta. In this economic vision document, five pillars were identified namely Sustainable Economic Growth geared towards quality-of-life improvements and increased resilience; High Quality Infrastructure and Investment; Education and Employment; Environment and High Standards of Accountability; Governance and Rule of Law. With regards to the first pillar one of the identified targets was that of “improving productivity by leveraging digital”.
In 2021, Malta had also launched its National Post-Pandemic Strategy. This document also outlined various action points aimed at transforming Malta’s economy into one that is more resilient, competitive and productive. Unfortunately, these documents were not supported by a comprehensive strategic action plan with clear milestones, detailing what needs to be achieved and by when across all sectors of Malta’s economy. Additionally, they lacked clear policy decisions that consider long-term benefits over short-term adaptation costs.
The result was that come 2022 and 2023 Malta’s economy, although growing at a very fast pace, kept by and large doing so, with the same way it was doing prior to 2021 and hence Malta’s population grew by an average of 21,000 persons each year in 2022 and 2023, to support such economic growth.
The documents I mentioned come with significant costs to taxpayers, as their preparation would require the involvement of consultants. Hence, it is important that such economic vision documents are backed up by proper strategic action and implementation plans. From public statements made it seems that this time round this Vision document will include key milestones to be achieved by 2035. Hopefully this will be a step in the right direction to increase the chances of having due action.
However, one baseline remains constant. No matter how many economic vision documents we create, a fundamental issue persists that we, as a nation, must address if we hope to successfully implement any proposals arising from these documents. We need to agree that we cannot make sensible progress and solve problems we created by not wanting to change. We cannot think that change can come at no cost or decide to only implement changes that have little or no adaptation cost and pain. No such change is possible. Which is why I keep advocating that we need to greatly beef up our social dialogue as the changes needed to implement any future economic vision require the backing of everyone – the political class and all social partners. No economic vision document will do the job for us. We, as a nation, must step up and implement the necessary changes, no matter how challenging they may be.
