Give us your talent, Muscat says in new citizenship pitch

Malta wants your talent – Muscat enthused to the global rich in New York – not your money.

The Maltese prime minister has pitched a new call to the ‘high net worth individuals’ of the world at a global citizenship conference in the Big Apple on Thursday, where Malta is showcasing its €1.15 million passport sale.

“To be clear. Malta wants your talent, not your money. Your networks, not your accounts. This is because we are about the future, not the past.”

“We believe that the concept of citizenship is fast evolving and we want to be at the forefront of this innovation,” Muscat said after an introduction of Malta’s history and its economic potential.

“I just tell you what we are after... not money. It is talent. We want to enhance our competitiveness by increasing our talent pool and our global network,” he said of the Individual Investor Programme, which is believed to have already attracted over 130 applicants.

The Labour PM listed the great and the good of the nation: John Pace – who cast America’s Liberty Bell; John Zarb, former chairman of Nasdaq; ‘lateral thinking’ creator Edward de Bono, tenor Joseph Calleja (whose Met concert in New York he plugged), and Arvid Pardo, remembered at the United Nations as the father of the Law of the Sea.

“This is so much talent. But put simply, we want more. This is the input we are after because we believe that these are the new borders of a brave new world,” Muscat implored.”

In his compressed history of the islands, Muscat chronicled a straight line from Megalithic temples, older than Egypt’s pyramids, to “global architecture superstar” Renzo Piano’s City Gate project; then a rundown of rulers who lorded it over the islands: Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, Castillians, the Knights of St John, French and the British. “All these peoples have left their imprint on our mindset and lifestyle. I like to tell my foreign friends that the Maltese enjoy an Anglo-Saxon work ethic and a Mediterranean lifestyle. A happy mix, and thankfully it is not the other way round.”

He also plied Malta’s efforts in innovation and trade, pointing out to his audience that they were carrying a bit of Malta in their smartphones, with microchip components made in Malta. “Yes, microchips are our main export, and we do not think that we have exhausted our potential as an export industrial base.”

But apart from the usual talk on high quality labour and Malta’s Mediterranean bridge, Muscat set much store in extolling the short legislative distance between investors and policymakers.

“Those who take decisions,” he said about Malta’s politicians and top civil servants, “are accessible and ready to listen, and the system is small and nimble enough to be flexible around the concerns of investors, especially those who might be considered as just numbers in other countries.”