Back in 2006, the area in Ricasoli formerly earmarked for an engineered landfill was instead considered as a base for Smartcity – a massive public-private partnership between the government of Malta and UAE companies Sama and Tecom (who also acquired 60% of Maltacom’s shares). Talks for this project had been made public at a time when a fair amount of disillusionment with the current administration was persisting in the South, amid plans for recycling plants and fish farms, along with the nuisance of the Delimara power station. Residents could not understand why every irksome property had to be plonked in their back garden. It is rather clear that the choice of location for Smartcity reflected an interest from the government’s behalf to address a possible dwindle in southern vote.
With an outlay of Lm100m, Smartcity turns out to be the largest ever foreign direct investment in Malta. It is expected to generate 5,600 jobs in an infrastructure aimed at developing a self-sustaining township comprising office space, residential and lifestyle elements.
Like many other large-scale projects, the first public announcement of Smartcity not only generated a level of scepticism but also of political controversy. Announced a week before the 2006 local council elections, the project was immediately confronted with a complaint from the Kalkara mayor himself, for being left in the dark until the project was publicly announced.
The Malta Labour Party also came up with their stand against the project claiming that the government was not able to justify the investment of Lm3m for the reallocation of factories from Ricasoli, complaining about the extension of roads, electricity cables and drainage as well as highlighting issues on the transfer of public land.
Opposing camps did not seem to have solid enough arguments to hold water. Not enough momentum was generated for the project to turn into a fully-fledged controversy. Perhaps for the general public, the perceived benefits were greater than the threats highlighted among disagreeing parties.
In any case, the government still had to consider an investment in hyping up the project as one that is focused on foreign investment, job creation, education and the development of the ICT sector locally. Minister Austin Gatt and his communications team have had to make sure to avoid promoting the real estate value of the project, with the luxury apartments and outlets involved. At all costs, the project had to be completely detached from the likes of Portomaso, MIDI, Pender and other similar developments. 2007 gave the ministry the opportunity to talk about the project concretely since before talks had been finalised everything was still pretty much up in the air.
At the start of the year, the Cabinet approved the agreement framework for Smartcity Malta. It was agreed that the area will be used for the construction of villas and apartments (20%), open public areas (33%), hotel and retail activities (28%) and of course ICT (19%).
Indeed, a hype-up on the value of ICT in Malta and its potential followed. Addressing the potential problem of lack of availability of human resources, a number of initiatives aimed at increasing IT trained personnel were introduced. These included the myPotential scheme – a public-private partnership aimed at educating students, the unemployed and persons in employment who wish to pursue ICT training. What myPotential has done in essence was to address the affordability of private ICT tuition, as well as promote courses among people it targeted.
Later on in the year, the Ministry for IT&I together with the Ministry for Education launched the consultation process for an eLearning strategy, aimed at the exploitation of current technology within schools in Malta. It is not yet clear whether the Government will be offering some type of aid to church and independent schools within this strategy. Prior to the launch of the consultation process, St Aloysius’ College Rector Fr Patrick Magro had told MaltaToday, “Church schools are state-funded, although government subsidies only enable us to cover salary costs. Government school teachers will soon be supplied with school laptops, and if we are to follow suit, every laptop provided will have to be funded by parents – which is how everything, with the exception of salaries, is paid for around here.”
Besides the education element, media efforts also focused on the relationship between IT and economic growth and development. In March of this year, Austin Gatt announced that the World Economic Forum had ranked Malta the second most successful government in the world in promoting the use of ICT. In the same month, the ministry also revealed a KPMG report that valued Smartcity’s contribution to GDP alone at Lm218m. Another report, this time by Ernst & Young, revealed that 36% of foreign investment projects in Malta were in the ICT field. All these PR efforts were merely a few weeks prior to the final agreements signed in April. The media conference held to announce this also established that over an eight-year period, Smartcity has increased its 5,600 job creation estimation to 7,000 – when one calculates the several hundred jobs created in the economy as a multiplier effect of the project.
Smartcity submitted its project description statement to MEPA in this period, which was approved in a record time of 12 days. This was of course met with a level of controversy.
The first board Mmeting held by Smartcity Malta was last September – wherein the appointment of Chief Operating Officer Chris Cole was announced. The board is comprised of Deepak Padmanabhan, chairman of the board and CEO of Emirates International Telecommunications; Fareed Abdulrahman, executive director of Smartcity; Claudio Grech, head of the minister’s secretariat of the Ministry for Investment, Industry and Information Technology; and Falah Al Salman, Senior Director, Project Management, Sama Dubai.
In the same month, Minister Austin Gatt and the PM attended the GITEX technology week were the Masterplan for Smartcity Malta was unveiled and brought over to Malta soon after.
In the media, “smart” puns were endlessly to remind the public of this project when other initiatives are undertaken by the same ministry. The most recent was “Smart Island”, the working title used last month for the launch of Malta’s IT strategy for the years 2008-10. Smart Island features 180 targets aimed at placing Malta among the top 10 most technologically advanced countries.