Maltese industries list lowering of prices as greatest priority

A Eurobarometer survey has identified that the greatest priority for Maltese companies is lowering prices while increasing productivity does not rank high on their lists. Maltese companies are also among the lowest in re-investment on training and improvement of production costs. When thinking about priorities for their companies, Maltese respondents ranked highest in considering lowering prices as the greatest priority. The Maltese also did not consider increasing labour productivity as being of paramount importance. Only 14% of Maltese companies  the lowest ranking in all Europe, considered  increasing labour productivity as a priority. While half of Spanish and French Companies see lowering of production costs a priority, only a third of Maltese companies agree and only 15% of German companies consider this to be a priority. On the other hand, 70% of German and Austrian companies are looking to invest in tailored and customised solutions to increase their profits while this is an aspiration of only 10% of Macedonian companies. One out of five Maltese companies are seeking to invest in rapid development of new products and services to be able to capture new markets. When assessing the amount of the turnover which is re-invested in improving the company, 55% of companies did not invest in business processing improvements, 68% did not invest in training and 60% did not invest in company reputation and branding. These are among the highest profiles in the countries surveyed and put Malta in the same cohort as Estonia, Spain, Greece and Italy. In contrast, between 18-25% of Swiss, Cypriot, Austrian and Portuguese companies devote more than 5% of their total turnover to training . Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Austria Portugal Slovakia, United Kingdom, Turkey and the United States invest more than 5% of their turnover towards improvements in their business processes.