Re-Ordering our Priorities

The Malta Independent 

Certain private sector operators keep resisting change and endeavour to earn their way by perpetuating market rigidities depriving clients of a fair choice. Many can’t get used to the idea that they can earn a living, indeed prosper, by delivering value to their clients in the context of a competitive market.

This is nowhere more evident than in relations to public transport services. An up-grading of public transport is overdue. It is probably the single most important source for acquiring a step change improvement in our quality of life. Not only we would be able to travel from point A to point B more comfortably and reliably, but it could bring about a marked improvement in environmental standards in terms of air quality and open spaces currently occupied by congested traffic and parking. It could also make the tourist industry more competitive possibly putting it back on a strong growth path as it has not experienced since 1997/98.

Following massive investment by the State in subsidising new public buses the operators of public transport seem to be pressing for their solitary fare increase. Rather than take the signal that the State, to whom the consumers pay taxes, has already done its part by subsiding their new configuration permitting them to offer a better service, they seek to cash in their favour the improvement through State funded buses by charging more the consumer who through taxation has subsidised their trading position.

Public transport operators should devise systems to boost volume and gain more revenue flows from increased usage and not through increased fares. They must realise that new configuration alone will not do the trick. The network reach, loyalty schemes to stimulate long term usage, attitude of bus drivers and punctuality of the service are ingredients as essential as the shine on the new buses.

White taxi service also pretend that they can force visiting cruise-liner tourists to use their exclusive service to take them from the Grand Harbour Quay to Valletta. How can we grow tourism if we treat visitors which such disdain? Tourists must be given a choice and of course the choice should include the taxi service. If their price is right and service is good, visitors will choose them in preference to more common transport means. But it would be the tourists’ choice not our forcing them to use a service they might not wish.

If white taxi operators do not have sufficient business to earn their living they should try to reduce their prices and offering their service to Maltese. Getting to Valletta or Sliema with private transport means, parking fees and all, has become expensive and taxis could offer a reasonable alternative. Again revenue enhancement could come from volume growth not price increases.

And the shops of lower Valletta can’t expect the Authorities to force tourists to walk back from Valletta to their cruise liner purely to give them the opportunity of access to their shops. In modern age it is shops that have to chase clients and not clients forced to find shops.

And if government means to set an example to private operators to stop their narrow minded thinking and see the wider picture of how better we would all be by devoting resources to grow the market rather than to defend our small patch, it has to act responsibly especially when it comes to macro economic polices concerning growth sectors like tourism in general and cruise-liner business in particular. What sense does it make to give priority quay access to guest military vessel visitors and relegate regular cruise liner to uncomfortable backward quay locations?

This country has long decided to stop making a living from its defence related values and to earn our way through commercial activities where we have a competitive position, especially from tourism. We could have made a living from our defence values but collectively decided not to. It was a free choice which has been widely subscribed and is enshrined in the Constitution.

When we come to prioritise we cannot have second thoughts and put defence values above the interest of our economic growth sources. If the Government chooses the wrong priorities it sends bad signals encouraging private sector operators to persist in their defensive narrow minded way of doing things, rather than in pursuing forward looking open growth strategies to delivering more value than clients expect for the price they pay.