One old idea that I expected to see trundled out in this budget is the one about converting the construction industry from new building to restoration. I remember it being mentioned by a Nationalist government minister as far back as 1988. I loved it then and I love it still. For nineteen years I have been waiting for that old promise to be kept and this year I was sure it would be. Everything is ripe for it: the development business is grinding to a halt. Boom after boom we have built up every possible spot, we have demolished what we built and built higher. Today, apart from having uglified almost all the country, we have on our laps tens of thousands of vacant properties, a mammoth glut mostly consisting of apartments that can never ever be occupied.
Building enterprises large and small, new and old are pressing the government to fish them out of their predicament, to get their industry moving again. They have plants and equipment they must employ, labour skilled and unskilled that has to be paid. Those who subcontract their development business have capital sunk into buildings that are earning them nothing. Now they are beginning to lose hope that it ever will. Even if they have no bank manager worrying them about their loans, long-term stagnation leaves them very wealthy only on paper, their net worth imploding and income disappearing.
Here is a whole industry aching to get to work again, a great opportunity for a minister of finance who wants to employ an available energy to stimulate the economy. At times like these it would make sense to regroup, to invest available resources in infrastructural works and maintenance works: and there is plenty that needs doing. Say ‘roads’ and you have universal consensus.
More than this, a vast architectural heritage – both public and private – lies all around us, and is rapidly crumbling around our ears. Everybody in the construction industry could have a piece of that pie. If restoration were to become more lucrative than new buildings, there can be little doubt that there would be a mass migration in the industry to the area that pays best.
To be fair, it takes more than simply wishing to convert an industry to actually perform the transformation. Not everybody has the skill, expertise and organizational structure it takes to handle a major restoration. Minor restorations left to the uninitiated could be worse than letting such assets rot away.
Yet it can be done. In the past two decades we have developed these skills. We have architectural firms that have specialised in the field and artisans who have given new life to old crafts. They are relatively few and will always be fewer than the enormous task demands. This was the year in which we could have invested in capacity building in this sector.
The most optimistic forecasts show a global economy in very slow recovery. No matter what we do, the external demand for our goods and services will remain less than optimal. The demand for building services already teetering in a greatly warped domestic market situation has been struck by the uncertainty of the international situation and the resulting domestic slowdown.
Given the existing glut of properties, it would be criminal to encourage any further increase in the housing stock. Now more than ever, it makes sense to employ the extra capacity in restoration projects. Nobody would complain. Major restorations such as the Valletta Waterfront or Manoel Island are welcomed by everybody. The proposed restoration of the bastions is controversial only because of disagreement on the priorities made. Quite apart from these massive projects, there are very many thousands of other smaller, private projects available.
How many architectural gems in private ownership are crumbling because their owners are not in a position to repair them? Many more would undertake the repair this year if seriously encouraged to do so.
While we wait for the global economy to regain its stride and allow us to earn our living, we should be busy preparing the country to be able to do so even better than before. There was a time when the economy was at such low ebb that we were glad to give people a job, any job, often at starvation-rate wages for virtually pointless tasks, which we never learnt from. We need not go there again. Restoration is a field that allows those involved in it very significant job satisfaction and a new interest in the skills they already have. The opportunities to develop them further are endless. There is room for both the uneducated and the intellectual.
Once the recession is over there will be more, not less, restoration work to be done. It will never be over. As more projects are completed, the ones that remain begging for attention will demand to be done. The copycat factor will lock in. The slower crowd will be able to get things done too.
In an ideal world, all this should have started 19 years ago and today, we would merely step up the tempo. We would also have in place a vast body of dedicated regulation to certify skills and to set clear guidelines for operators. We might also have skills to export. We do not seem to have realised that we should be more Italian than the Italians in this field because we are not only endowed with a vast heritage but have it concentrated in a very small space.
The fact that we have not yet twigged is surprising. The idea that we have not taken a step in this direction in the middle of a crisis of these dimensions is little short of alarming.
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For nineteen years I have been waiting for that old promise to be kept and this year I was sure it would be. Everything is ripe for it: the development business is grinding to a halt. Boom after boom we have built up every possible spot, we have demolished what we built and built higher. Today, apart from having uglified almost all the country, we have on our laps tens of thousands of vacant properties, a mammoth glut mostly consisting of apartments that can never ever be occupied.
