Once a group has completed about six months of mandatory savings and gone through the essential elements of social mobilisation, its members would be provided with an opportunity to acquire vocational skills as a prelude to preparing them to be future micro entrepreneurs. With this training, members are also encouraged to select their own micro enterprise and the change agents do not advise them what they should select. The only advice given to these up and coming micro entrepreneurs is that they should select any business line where the output could be sold within a radius of 15 km. from their homes. This way they were guided  18  This is in line with the traditional local culture which has always upheld savings as a core value of life. Even according to Buddhist scriptures, a wise household should save at least a quarter of his income as a safeguard against unforeseen events use a half of his income for further wealth creation. See, Singalowada Sutra. Dheega Nikaya. 19  In fact, as to be expected, the members initially resisted that they could not save that much when they did not even earn that amount of money. But, when it was shown to them that there was a vast amount of resources lying idle around them which could be tapped and they could cut certain inessential expenditures, they willingly participated in the savings programme. BIS Review 22/2008  5  to produce for the market and keep their selling costs at an affordable level.
This explains why I was pleased to accept to participate in this conference, whose purpose is indeed to take stock of what has been achieved since Malta joined the EU in 2004 and, more importantly, to reflect on what still remains to be done. Where have we come from? In order to appreciate the nature of the challenge that membership implied, it is first necessary to recall where we were coming from. Suffice it to point out that the European Commission’s response in 1993 to Malta’s application had been highly critical. It concluded that, “The adoption of the acquis communautaire … depends on a thoroughgoing overhaul of the Maltese economy’s regulatory and operational systems.” The first steps in the reform process were taken in the mid-1990s. These included the liberalisation of the financial system and of the import tariff regime, the gradual easing of exchange controls, the partial deregulation of interest rates and the introduction of value added tax and of lower direct taxes. When the membership application was reactivated in 1998, however, the economy still needed significant restructuring. Further reforms were, therefore, launched once accession negotiations commenced in 1999, including a further dismantling of trade restrictions and the privatisation of State-owned enterprises. This, however, was still not enough. The vulnerability of the Maltese economy was exposed in 2001 by the mounting competitive pressures from emerging economies and by two major external shocks, the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the events of 9/11, which together had an adverse impact on the manufacturing and tourism sectors.