Everyone has a role to play in improving productivity in the country, the CEO of the Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry Marthese Portelli told WhosWho.mt during an interview.

It is not the sole role of the Government, of businesses or of employees to improve it, as “all three must work together to achieve the targets that we would like to reach as a country,” she stressed.

Dr Portelli highlights the need for productivity to improve in Malta, adding that if it improves, then Malta’s competitiveness will also enhance automatically. Improving productivity must also keep quality at heart, she explains. Earlier this month, PwC Malta published an economic update which pointed to a slowdown in productivity in the country. The report had highlighted a structural imbalance: some of the fastest-growing sectors are among the least productive, while higher value-added sectors are underperforming.

The Malta Chamber CEO says that productivity cannot be seen in isolation, and that this is one of the pitfalls policymakers sometimes make. It’s relatively easy to come out with incentives that are separate, she says. But “in order to ensure that you tackle productivity, the issue needs to be looked at holistically.”

The Malta Chamber had come out with proposed incentives and ideas as to how businesses can improve their productivity by taking up digitalization at a faster rate than is currently happening, she said.

One of the Chamber’s proposals, she said, ties in as a Key Performance Indicator. “You would get incentives based on the difference in productivity that you register over a specified period of time.”

The Chamber had proposed that the Government support employers, possibly with tax deductions equivalent to the training costs, for employee training that produces measurable outcomes in productivity and more efficient operating models.

She holds that a complete change of mindset, and a complete change of culture, are needed, not only within businesses or within the mindset of the business owners, “but also within that of the employee.”

“The business owner needs to understand the potential of today's technology. The team needs to evaluate and appreciate the value that proper implementation of digitalisation can have on a business, and employees also need to embrace the change and the investment being done by the company. So really and truly it's a transition that will require multiple players. Nobody can do it on their own.”

In parallel to digitalisation, the Chamber also put forward ideas to help improve the labour force, such as proposals related to training, upskilling and reskilling, among other things.

The Malta Chamber CEO also underlines traffic as having an impact on productivity, both in terms of traffic on land, as well as with regards to the facility of exporting products or importing raw materials.

Dr Portelli says that the Government must keep two main points in mind in whatever it does – productivity and quality.

“As a country, as a nation, as a state, we need to bear those two ideas in mind in every single policy that is going to be formulated, in every single incentive that is going to be rolled out, and even in every piece of legislation that is going to be brought up in Parliament.”