Excellent ratings for Malta, paving the way for an exciting Island Summer.
Fitch Ratings affirming Malta’s rating of A+
In the financial sector, Malta continues to excel by showing a strong economic recovery from the previous Covid-affected years while depicting solid growth projections. Fitch Ratings reaffirms its A+ rating for Malta with a stable outlook. The well-accredited agency highlighted how Malta surpassed its economic targets in 2021 by exceeding its real GDP from the forecasted 5.7% to 9.4%. Fitch ratings firmly believes that Malta will continue to consolidate its financial growth and investments but it is also taking into consideration that the Ukrainian war and imposed Russian sanctions may affect the real growth predictions.
Removal of Malta from the FATF Grey listing
This month the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) announced the removal of Malta from its ‘grey list’. In June 2021, the FATF raised concerns about the Maltese regulatory infrastructure, especially in tax-related money laundering. From the testing made by the task force in the past year, Malta has exceeded most of the FATF recommendations, leading Malta to head out of the list in one year.
Malta’s 2nd placement for excellent bathing waters
The European Environment Agency (EEA) issued its annual report on the quality of the European bathing waters where it shows that in recent years the European waters have been drastically improving, resulting in more health-risk free bathing sites to be enjoyed by those who find sea waters as a way of leisure, sport or even health therapy. The 2022 Bathing Water Report states that Europe enjoys highly 84.8% of excellent rated inland and coastal swimming sites, formulated from the data collected by sampling a total of 21,859 bathing sites around Europe.
In this report, Malta classifies as having mostly excellent-rated swimming sites and very few rated having good quality waters. The Maltese islands offer a total of 56 sandy and rocky beaches around Malta, Gozo and Comino, which waters are warm for many months throughout the year - thanks to the great climate that the islands are surrounded with. 11 beaches are certified under the Blue Flag beach, meaning that these beaches have high environmental and quality standards. The most popular and picturesque beaches on the islands are the Blue Lagoon in Comino, Ramla Bay and Mgarr ix-Xini in Gozo, and Golden Bay, Paradise Bay, Ghar Lapsi and St Peter’s Pool.ency is currently preparing a completely new programme that aims to attract third-country nationals who are start-up investors wishing to permanently reside here, subject to achieving the required and legal criteria to successfully establish a fruitful business for Malta. This new permit should entice entrepreneurs to invest and register their start-ups in Malta, bringing along their new and innovative ideas which will help shape the future of the Maltese industries and economy.
The Agency is currently preparing a completely new programme that aims to attract third-country nationals who are start-up investors wishing to permanently reside here, subject to achieving the required and legal criteria to successfully establish a fruitful business for Malta. This new permit should entice entrepreneurs to invest and register their start-ups in Malta, bringing along their new and innovative ideas which will help shape the future of the Maltese industries and economy.
Our multilingual professionals at DZ Advisory would be glad to assist you with your enquiries. If you would like to receive more information, please provide us with your contact details and one of our team members shall be in contact with you promptly.
