Malta Chamber appeals to EU Commissioner for further assistance

Tancred Tabone, the President of The Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry stressed the importance of the internationalisation of local small and medium enterprises (SMEs). He was speaking during a business breakfast organised by the Malta Business Bureau (MBB), whose main speaker was Vice President Antonio Tajani, EU Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship.

On the recent Libyan uprising which affected a number of Maltese companies, Tabone expressed the Malta Chamber's surprise at the lack of concrete support for SMEs from the EU Commission.

"On this occasion, we asked for help to SMEs who experienced a sudden halt in business and payments - whilst being exposed to foreign principals and needing to maintain payroll costs - even for social reasons," Tabone explained.

Tabone appealed to the European Union to look into possible mechanisms to support European SMEs in the event of serious crises erupting again in Malta's neighbouring region.  "This mechanism should serve to prevent the severe financial hardship inflicted on those SMEs concerned, mainly because they were determined to retain their human resources to ensure they could continue to serve this market once the conflict was over," Tabone said.

"With Malta's domestic market being limited, SMEs are faced with the need to internationalise at a very early stage. This is why the internationalisation of SMEs is constantly at the top of the Malta Chamber's agenda," Tabone said.

He added that studies show that Malta tops the EU rankings in terms of the percentage of SMEs with direct imports.  "This confirms the fact that we are a nation of importers and even the smallest of our companies are engaged in cross-border trading within the Single Market and beyond, often sourcing even from the Far East."

Tabone explained that the same study shows that Malta places second in terms of the percentage of internationalised SMEs - with a figure in excess of 80 per cent. "These figures need to be placed in context that only 25% of EU SMEs engage in export activity in the Internal Market and 13% are internationally active outside the EU."

"Malta's figures confirm the notion of an inverse relation between the size of the SME's home country population and its level of international activity.  For this reason, once a Maltese SME has reached a certain level of growth, its only option to grow further is to venture abroad," Tabone said.

According to Tabone this was the prime reason why the Maltese business community was so strongly in favour of EU membership for Malta in 2003.

Tabone said the chamber agrees with the Commission's decision to emphasise the promotion of SME internationalisation through clusters and networks. "We regard this as one of the more important policy developments. Clusters and network organisations need to be recognised in Malta as important facilitators and become more integrated into business support schemes aimed at enhancing SME internationalisation."