Central Bank governor Mario Vella has warned that Malta’s domestic labour gap can only be addressed by increasing female participation in the workforce, or else face increased reliance on automated workers and Artificial Intelligence.

In a speech that captured Vella’s introspective assessment of the far-reaching changes taking place in Malta, the CBM governor said Malta’s rising population and foreign worker influx was clearly leaving its effect.

Malta’s 30-year-old climate change initiative would never have gone ahead, according to its author, had he not been sat next to its main opponent on an eight-hour flight. 

“I had been trying to sit next to this man for six months but he would have nothing to do with me... when I found out he was in the airport VIP lounge, I made sure to get bumped up and then there was no escaping me,” David Attard told a University seminar yesterday.

Malta contains multitudes. Despite being the smallest member of the European Union, the Mediterranean archipelago below Sicily bears traces of numerous peoples and conquerors: Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Spanish, French and, most notably, the European crusader knights known as the Order of Malta. Preachers (St.Paul), painters (Caravaggio) and politicians (Napoleon) have washed up on the rocky sun-roasted shores and left marks too. The Maltese language is close to Arabic (though English is the second official tongue).

MALTA’S CENTER UNTIL the 16th century, the golden-walled city of Mdina, sits on a hill with a view over its thick ramparts and across scrubby plains to Valletta, the current capital, and the glittering sea.

Malta has topped the eurozone’s economic growth charts during the first half of the year, data released by rating agency DBRS shows. With a growth rate of over five per cent, Malta ranked first, followed by Latvia and Slovenia. The average growth rate in the eurozone during the first half of the year stood at 2.3 per cent. DBRS said growth in the eurozone had a weak start to the year, but remained steady. “Growth was driven by household consumption and gross fixed investment.

Two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges plan to make the tiny European nation of Malta a central hub of their operations, and analysts say others are sure to follow. Officials on the Mediterranean archipelago, the European Union’s tiniest member, are aiming to boost its fortunes by becoming one of the world’s friendliest jurisdictions for a sector that’s caused concern among other regulators.

Malta has once again recorded the highest economic growth in the Euro Area with a real GDP growth rate of 6.6 per cent in 2017.

This growth rate is more than double the average growth rate of 2.3 and 2.4 per cent recorded in the Euro Area and the EU28 respectively.

In nominal terms, GDP grew by 9.0 per cent. The latter augurs well for the debt-to-GDP ratio for 2017, which is expected to fall below 55 per cent.

wo international credit agencies, Moody’s and DBRS, have given an upgrade in Malta’s economic rating, reports published on Friday show.

In a statement, the government said that after DBRS had improved Malta’s rating last August, the agency has now given Malta an upgrade from ‘A’ to ‘A high’, which is the highest ever rating given to the country.

On the same day, Moody’s revised its rating from ‘A3 stable’ to ‘A3 positive’, which is the first upgrade given by the agency to Malta since October 2013.