05 February, 2026
The Malta Chamber Deputy President Nick Xuereb and CEO Dr Marthese Portelli were invited to participate during 2 panel discussions at the IFSP 2023 Annual Conference.
In his opening remarks, Xuereb noted that government subsidies, although critical, should be focused on the right areas such as directing funds towards investment into new energy projects.
With regards to manufacturing, Deputy President said that although manufacturing was key to Malta’s economy and was one of the most resilient during COVID, the industry’s contribution towards our GDP has declined throughout the past years. “Due to Malta’s geographical disadvantages and productivity challenges, we need to move up the value chain and push for the manufacturing sector to continuously invest in improvement and automation,” he said.
CEO Dr Marthese Portelli said that “excessive and superfluous bureaucracy always has a negative impact – this is true not only for the financial services industry but it is crosscutting across all sectors and industries. It impacts our competitiveness and attractiveness, apart from the frustration that it creates.”
“Admittedly our current bureaucratic system puts us at a disadvantage when compared with other countries – there are countries which are worse than us, but we should be looking at being better than those who are already better than us. Tackling excessive and superfluous bureaucracy is all about simplification, automation and integration,” she said.
During her intervention The Malta Chamber CEO highlighted that the strategy is in the right direction, however, in order to lead to its proper execution, we need to make sure that it:
• has clear milestones and implementation dates
• has set KPIs that must be reached
• has proper service standards which must be observed
• is supported by the proper infrastructure and support structures required
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