The Enterprise Consultative Council

GRTU Director General Vince Farrugia attended this week for the first time, the newly established Enterprise Consultative Council. GRTU supports this initiative and looks forward for a more coordinated action programme in favour of enterprise, resulting from the activities of this consultative Council. During this council meeting enterprise representatives were given information on Government's action programme on the Small Business Act (SBA), the setting up of the business support centre by Malta Enterprise and the work being done on the review of the trade licencing Act.

Vince Farrugia emphasised on the need to better assess the performance of Government vis-à-vis the small business act principles. GRTU participates in the UEAPME SBA Implementation Scoreboard – the level in percentage terms to which national institutions have already implemented the policy priorities of the SBA as compared to the previous years. The scoreboard measures among others the work of the commission and Parliament on what is called the think small first index. This index measures how far the legislation, administration, and  business support action is effective on the performance of small businesses. Vince Farrugia stated that he wishes the Ministry and the people responsible for Micro and Small business in Malta to work out similar indices. He continued saying that the SBA scoreboard is based on a set of questions for each of the 10 pillars of the SBA which follow to a large extend the priority areas within the SBA communication from the commission. With this set of questions,  we analyse from an SME point of view the degree to which the commitments in the SBA are realised and whether over an annual period new measures would have been implemented to improve further SME performance.

"Without this check list effect, it is very difficult for Government and for GRTU to measure precisely what happens, and Government should then not complain if too many conflicting comments appear in the media. GRTU strongly believes in this measured approach. The UEAPME measure produces also a Radar on implementation of SBA commitments. The Radar compares the situation in any one member state in comparison to the EU average. Today (June 2010) Malta is not even considered in this Radar as it is not part of the EU 18 average. Malta does not as yet feature as a Member State where the SBA has already been implemented" concluded Vince Farrugia.