Malta’s key benefits to business:

Open market economy with free movement of capital and labour;

Malta is a signatory to a number of international agreements, mainly in the economic and financial domains, maritime, air transport and culture;

The European Union is Malta's leading trade partner, however, exports to United States (17%), Asia (32%) and North Africa are significant;

Product-driven environment;

Relative cost advantage;

Multi-lingual community – English and Italian spoken and written fluently; French, Spanish and German also spoken by a substantial number of people;

Strong IT workforce – Malta is the Regional Training Centre for Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle;

The legislative framework is in line with the main EU directives, being sufficiently flexible and versatile to relate to different legal systems;

Paramount anti-money laundering standards have nurtured financial services sector;

Excellent economic track record with sustained growth, economic and political stability;

Boasts an inflation rate and long-term interest rate lower than EU average;

Has entered the ERMII mechanism and targets to adopt the Euro in year 2007;

A modern and competitive tax regime providing an excellent base for setting up tax efficient structures. The highest individual tax rate is of 35%;

Established banking and insurance facilities have led to a sharp growth in financial intermediary services;

High standard of living – good quality of life, low criminal rate, excellent health services and offers diverse entertainment and sport facilities;

Social capital is the prime resource in Malta, having a labour force availability of more than 6% of the Maltese population at graduate and post graduate levels;

Excellent country sovereign credit rating – ‘A’ rating with a stable outlook by Standard and Poor – indicating a high to medium quality investment;

Foreign investment has enabled the island to modernise over the past decade. Malta is therefore ready and prepared for the competition;

Pharmacy, electronics, information technology, agric-foods, the environment or fine chemistry are a number of sectors rich with opportunities for investors;

Besides the "normal" limited liability company, which is the norm in the manufacturing sector, Malta proposes two other distinct type of company: the International Holding Company (IHC) and the International Trading Company (ITC).

For more information please contact Dr. James Muscat Azzopardi at jamesma@ma-advocates.com