The Chief Executive Officer of ROCS Group, Colin Nicholas Aquilina, speaking as an operator within the travel sector, said that business opportunity in 2020, and even in 2021, has been “wiped out” with an equivalent depletion of any revenue generated in 2019.

“In our opinion, the upcoming Budget should focus on protecting the business community which has been very badly affected and re-establishing confidence in the market.

“From travel to insurance to retail to jobs, we noticed a drop in business in all divisions ranging from 100 per cent to 65 per cent,” he specified.

He attributed this, in part, to Malta’s small size and internal market which meant that “the minute tourism drops and internal consumption declines in view of a loss in confidence, business in general suffers, creating a domino effect on cash flow, loss of jobs and so on.”

In light of this, the forthcoming Budget, in his view, “should address our sector by protecting local businesses from collapse” as a result of the pandemic, as well as work on “restabilising confidence in the local market by injecting funds in the local economy and introducing particular initiatives to guarantee market performance.”

Asked to comment on the pre-Budget’s focus on the improvement of infrastructure and sustainability, Mr Aquilina said these “should be high on the agenda”, though he didn’t believe the former was Malta’s biggest issue.

In his view, long-term sustainability was the more difficult challenge.

Moreover, new technology sectors should be of priority, though he emphasised that “apart from the support within the Budget framework”, the respective regulatory bodies should be “open for new concepts”, thinking outside the box to ease the transition to new technologies.

This is an extract of a feature first carried in the September edition of The Malta Business Observer