The Malta Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry has renewed its call for urgent government action on traffic and congestion, warning that the country’s continued inaction is imposing a measurable cost on business productivity, worker wellbeing and national competitiveness.
In a statement issued on 15 July 2026, the Chamber said that despite submitting concrete proposals across multiple consultation rounds, pre-Budget documents and sector-specific papers throughout the last legislature, very few of its recommendations had been meaningfully adopted. It described the situation as unsustainable and called on government to move beyond piecemeal responses.
The Chamber argued that reducing private car dependency requires both incentives and disincentives, and that positive reinforcement alone had already proved insufficient. Without making car use less attractive during peak periods alongside offering credible alternatives, it said, meaningful behavioural change would not follow.
Among the specific proposals put forward, the Chamber called for the introduction of mobility e-wallets funded through urban parking and congestion revenues, designed to encourage genuine modal shift rather than simply subsidise existing travel behaviour. It also proposed an AI-driven permit and road-closure coordination platform that would give residents and businesses advance visibility of planned disruptions, building on existing coordination tools between government entities that currently lack a public-facing element.
Further proposals included school transport reform through geographic pooling and supervised walking initiatives to ease congestion around school gates, smart parking information systems in high-congestion areas and loading-bay management and delivery-slot booking tools for commercial districts. The Chamber also proposed public-private partnerships to move on-road parking underground or into multi-storey facilities, logistics consolidation hubs where evidence supports them and a framework linking public transport funding to independently verified mobility outcomes rather than projected targets.
On governance, the Chamber noted that Malta was still dealing with basic coordination failures at a time when digitalisation and AI tools should already be standard. It pointed to the continued use of manual traffic management at roundabouts as an illustration of how far implementation had lagged behind ambition.
The Chamber said government must now demonstrate the political will to take decisions that may prove difficult in the short term but are essential for long-term economic health. Without decisive action, it warned, Malta risked entrenching inefficiency and further undermining its competitiveness.
