The Malta Chamber has pushed back against Finance Minister Clyde Caruana's suggestion that Maltese businesses favour cheap third-country national (TCN) workers over capital investment, placing the blame for Malta's productivity shortfall firmly on successive governments rather than the private sector.
In a statement issued on 7 October 2026, the Chamber argued that the current labour market framework was deliberately built by past administrations to support volume-driven economic growth, and that it is neither fair nor accurate to hold employers responsible now that physical and infrastructural limits are being reached. The Chamber said it shared the Minister's concern about population pressure on infrastructure and quality of life, but maintained that his diagnosis was wrong.
The numbers the Chamber cited make the structural problem hard to dismiss. Over the past decade, Malta's Gross Value Added grew by 81.9%, but 68.9% of that expansion came from adding workers. Productivity gains, meaning output per worker, accounted for just 3.1%. Between 2021 and 2025, real GDP rose 22.9%, yet real GDP per hour worked fell by 0.2%, leaving Malta 21st out of 27 EU member states for productivity growth over that period. Malta's population stood at 588,254 at the end of 2025, with foreign residents making up around 31%, and is projected to approach 636,000 by 2030.
The Chamber also took issue with the idea that hiring TCNs is a convenient shortcut for employers, arguing that the HR administration burden and associated costs are considerable.
On fiscal policy, the Chamber said existing incentive structures actively discourage productive capital investment relative to flexible labour and speculative assets. It criticised budget measures that are repeatedly delayed from one year to the next, arguing that the practice undermines corporate planning. The Chamber called for fiscal incentives and grant measures to be made available from the start of the budgetary year, with clear disbursement timelines attached.
The organisation also criticised what it described as aggressive public-sector labour absorption, particularly in the lead-up to elections. It called on Government to commission an independent audit of all public bodies to identify structural redundancies and support the redeployment of surplus staff into the private sector.
The Chamber said it was ready to engage with both Government and Opposition on an evidence-based plan combining infrastructure investment, streamlined administration, and better-designed incentives, with the aim of shifting Malta's growth model from headcount to productivity.
