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Malta is a well-known country for hosting a good number of companies of the gaming industry, IT departments, and Fintechs services, as well as other companies that are looking for IT professionals to help them with the management of the data that has been collected during the years. It is common to find local companies on international operations, and an international IT brand having a branch in Malta, this is due to their technology development through the years, when they are having a high demand of technical talent, mostly software developed professionals have benefited from this growth.

Due to the high demand and limited supply of native IT professionals in the country, salaries, and benefits are improving, and they are higher than in other Maltese industries. A recent survey showed that Malta is one of the top 3 destinations for ex-pats, and this can be due to having over 300 days of summer, rich culture, and a multicultural population.

This country also joined the European Union on the 1st of May 2004 with the “Maltese European Union membership referendum”, where they decided to become part of the EU with 54% of the votes. Also, this country has a minimum wage of €761.97 which is a strong point for having a competitive job market and also to reduce production costs when working with IT companies from Malta.

Why should somebody work with companies from Malta?

This country is having a strong and steady growth in the Information Technology industry, especially for the gaming industry, offering a good number of opportunities for careers in this field. There’s also a good trend for the Cryptocurrency sector, the prediction is that they have a very strong growth over the following years, which is very good news for IT companies in Europe looking for outsourcing their fintech or crypto services.

There’s a high demand for IT professionals and this means the competitiveness is high, which is good for companies because they will be able to offer better quality services to their European and local partners. The ease of doing business in Malta is a very good point for working with companies from Malta because they are also under the European laws, becoming a member of the European Union 16 years ago, it will be easy to make deals with this country due to the union agreements.

The government started to help the initial growth of Malta’s IT in the 1990s when the country understood that the ICT industry was crucial for their economic development and also for the diversified economy. Malta is a country where you can do all the bureaucratic processes online because they understand that this could help the people and also the creation of new deals with this country’s companies. Malta is especially interesting for the Gaming and Fintech industries, because of its fiscal benefits, a strategic location in the center of the Mediterranean, and very near to other European countries. A lot of big companies are working here for these reasons, some of them are HP, Microsoft, and Cisco.

It is also an interesting scenario for companies from UK, Germany or Sweden because of their differences on purchasing power, a big advantage for companies’ from these countries as they can have a profitable deal working with companies from Malta while still having the safety and warranty of making deals with other’s European country, with all the advantages that this have.

What somebody should be aware of when working with IT companies from Malta?

Due to the offshore nature of Malta, it is very difficult to make deals with local banks, because they are used to being suspicious about anyone because the country is a prime target for money laundering. This is something that has to be pointed out.

Another thing that is needed to point out is that Bureaucracy can be strong sometimes coming from any country in Europe. It can take up to 6 months to get a bank account opened for a company and 2-3 months to do the paperwork for establishing a company in Malta.

Another point that is important to talk about is that the unfortunate downsides of the relaxed lifestyle of Malta are that people often disregard other people’s time, in terms of business this can mean, companies requesting to meet in person, and not discussing through email or a call. Also, their personal culture makes them be generally kind, but people from Malta tend to be really stubborn, this also can be applied in the business environment, if someone refuses a deal, it is better to try to suggest another option and not continue trying to convince because this can be found as bad education even if it is in a formal and good way.

It is important to point out that is difficult to establish a company in this country in terms of viability because the registration and maintenance fees in Malta are expensive, so it can be difficult to find maintain a company in this country without a big profit, that also means that the ones that you can find here are probably reliable, but we will talk about this in the following section.

It is difficult to find bad points for working with companies from Malta, but here we tried to do a brief resume of the most significant ones.

How reliable are IT companies from Malta?

Companies from Malta are generally very reliable for the following reasons: They are under the law and European agreements like the other European countries that are in the European Union, it is expensive to maintain a company in Malta for the registration and maintenance fees, so the company needs to be especially profitable to keep working and earning money, there’s a long process for registering a company in Malta, especially with the banks, because of their nature as an offshore country many people try to use it as a money laundering, so they will look suspicious at everyone trying to do some process with a bank in Malta.

Also, Malta has the same law as the other countries of the EU, so cybercrime has its punishments, making it safer for companies from outside of Malta to work with them and know that everything will go well. Other crimes are very small in percentage, so we can say that Malta is a safe country, but there’s a problem about corruption that needs to be pointed out.

How is the IT industry from Malta in relation to the neighboring regions/countries?

Malta is surrounded by Italy in the north, Tunisia and Libya in the south, we will talk about this country’s IT industry.

To start with the north, Italy has the fourth-largest market for IT in Europe, but it still suffers from structural problems and this industry in Italy it’s not as big as others’ countries in Europe, it is not a really mature market, but still the fourth largest in Europe.

Tunisia has been growing in this sector according to the National Computer Center, and it has 750 IT companies, this data is from 2019, the market of this country is still small, but it is growing at its capacities. There is not much data about Libya because this country’s situation is quite unstable because of a civil war going on since the 2010s.

Tech Industry in Malta in 2022

The forecasts for 2022 are positive enough for the Maltese IT and Tech industry as the Government lead initiative will continue to build bridges between the local workforce and foreign tech companies and entrepreneurs.  However, the main challenge that the country faces is the shortage of skilled professionals able to enroll in the industry and provide consistent results. In this way, Malta is one of the largest tech workforce importers in the EU - a thing that will probably not change too much in 2022. 

Conclusion.

Malta’s companies are a good choice for outsourcing services and products because of their balance between prices, profitability, and safety for a business that is difficult to find in countries outside of Europe with the same balance. Even if it has its weak points, these were difficult to find because this is a good destination for outsourcing services and products and taking advantage of their strong and good points such as taxation.

Also, there it is needed to look for the best practices of this island and their particular way of being to carry on successful business deals.