SME BAROMETER (Q3 2024) traffic congestion and overpopulation feature as important issues impacting businesses
30 October 2024
The Malta Chamber of SMEs earlier today published the results of the SME Barometer (Q3 2024)...
One cannot say that surcharge on water and electricity is one of GRTU's most favourite topics. GRTU has objected to the way the surcharge operates since its inception.
It's simply not true that GRTU has at MCESD or elsewhere ever approved the way this surcharge is operated. It's a hideous little bit of bureaucracy with devastating negative effects on many small businesses and there is no way GRTU can ever approve this little monster.
It is a schemed designed to support large businesses from certain economic sectors at the expense of all others from other economic areas. Small businesses are forced to subsidies larger businesses irrespective of the level of electricity they consume to provide the goods or service their enterprise provide and there is no relief whatsoever.
Supermarkets, mini markets, confectioners, bakers, restaurants, hairdressers, sprayers, mechanics, tool shops, craftsmen, all those who use electricity as an essential input to their production suffer the full cost as capping is restricted to the few.
GRTU calls this gross discrimination and believes it to be in breach of the EU electricity Directives as it provides a crude form of cross subsidisation, indeed the crudest, as the small are forced to subsidise the large.
Again GRTU went to the EU Commission for relief and raise the matter in the EU Parliament, but who out there wants to listen to the small Maltese businesses. It's all talk bla, bla, bla and nothing else.
GRTU again raised the surcharge issue at MCESD. The system is wrong whatever else the designers of this crude bit of imposition love to say. They don't want to listen, but we won't stop complaining either.
The Malta Chamber of SMEs represents over 7,000 members from over 90 different sectors which in their majority are either small or medium sized companies, and such issues like the one we're experiencing right now, it's important to be united. Malta Chamber of SMEs offers a number of different services tailored to its members' individual requirements' and necessities. These range from general services offered to all members to more individual & bespoke services catered for specific requirements.
A membership with Malta Chamber of SMEs will guarantee that you are constantly updated and informed with different opportunities which will directly benefit your business and help you grow. It also entails you to a number of services which in their majority are free of charge and offered exclusively to its members (in their majority all free of charge).