Malta’s future withou' the British bases

Press, 18 April 1978, Page 18

Malta’s future withou' the British bases

By

GEOFFREY GROVES in Valetta

The tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, renowned for its stoic resistance to attack by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, is preoccupied with a problem of the future. In 12 months’ time British military bases on the island, still a source of considerable revenue, will close down. To the Socialist Premier, Mr Dorn Mintoff, and his supporters, a little more than half the island’s 300,000strong population, Britain’s military withdrawal, after nearly 180 years, will fulfil long-standing ambitions. But this “date with destiny,” as it is being called, could well bring economic problems. Malta’s revenue from the bases once stood at close to 35 per cent of the island’s total domestic product. This has since been sheered down to 16 per cent. Since Mr Mintoff came to power in 1971, strenuous efforts have been made to create a self-reliant economy by whipping up greater industrial productivity and by selling Malta as a popular tourist resort and as a centre

for investment and maritime activities. Industrial firms have quadrupled their output since 1971 and last year more than $245M worth of goods were shipped to Europe, largely to Common Market countries. Presenting a $274M budget in Parliament recently, Mr Mintoff’s Government revealed that tourism, a lynchpin industry, was now earning SBSM a year and that the figure was still rising with some 400,000 tourists scheduled to take holidays in Malta this year. Another measure of Mr Mintoff’s economic success is the healthy balance of payments. Yet this is only one side of the coin. The exercise, launched five years ago, to create a completely selfreliant economy by 1979 has failed. What preoccupies most Maltese today is that Malta’s economy has been contracting in the past 12 months. The gross domestic product increased by 9 per cent last year, but this marked a decline of 8 per cent over

the 1976 increase. Worse still, the pace is slowing down at a time when Malta needs a considerable increase in investment, more jobs and an economic spin-off to absorb the loss of the income generated now by the British military presence. Mr Mintoff is pleading with France, Italy, Libya and Algeria to bankroll Britain’s military withdrawal, claiming it is in all their interests that Malta becomes neutral. But neither France nor Italy is willing to fork out the amount of aid Mr Mintoff wants. In two angry statements in Parliament, he recently suggested this might force Malta to hammer out a separate pact with Libya which might involve a military arrangement. All this could mean is that 1979 will bring for the Maltese the start of affinities with peoples traditionally considered alien. And failure to secure the necessary economic aid might also mean the islanders will have to start tightening their belts. — 0.F.N.5., Copyright.