More efficiency and less bureaucracy are key to kick-start the economic market, increasing investor and consumer appetite, and stimulating economic growth.
The Malta Developers Association (MDA) notes that it is still receiving complaints on excessive red-tape, duplication of work, and conflicting information/requests from government departments, and notes that, unfortunately, this continued to surge during the past weeks, particularly since the start of the Covic-19 pandemic.
While noting the efforts being made across the board to keep businesses alive during tough times, the MDA believes that government departments, its different entities and local councils should be facilitating more rather than making it more difficult for business to get things done.
Reports include excessive paperwork for small things, incongruent requirements for the same service between one department and the other and lack of coordination between entities and units within the same government agencies which all lead to unacceptable delays.
The latter is also the case when it comes to assistance concerning Covid-19 measures.
The MDA calls upon the government and its agencies to try to introduce, without further delay, leaner processes in order to provide more efficient services. This should be done through less paperwork, the use of better IT infrastructure and more one-stop-shops while fully respecting transparency, openness and accountability.
Now that the island is preparing to open up more its economic activity, the MDA insists that less bureaucracy is one of the main ingredients needed if the country is to recover rapidly. In this context, the MDA already made a number of proposals and is expecting their implementation.