The Malta Shipyard lost Lm 9.3 million in
2006 which is Lm3.3 million over the budgeted amount the company had set out to
lose. In 2005, the company had lost Lm8.7million, after estimating that it
would have lost Lm8.8million during the year.
Despite the losses made in the recent
years, the Malta Shipyards has come a long way since 2002, when it netted a loss
totalling to Lm23 million, which was Lm4.9 million over the amount it had
expected to lose.
The Ministry for Investment, Industry and
Information Technology (IT) said on Friday that the main reasons behind the
company’s failure to curb losses included low productivity which decreased rather
than increased since 2004, poor time-keeping, ineffective supervision in the
monitoring of daily performance, the over
allocation of employees and high ‘rework’ elements.
The Ministry further said that
subcontracting and the organisation were not part of the reasons why the Shipyards,
restructured in 2003, failed to reach their targets.
In a bid to remedy the situation at the Shipyards the Ministry
believes that men allocation is to improve, while productions targets are to be
given and checked, with the Management being held accountable. Reducing the
consumption of consumable, improving the use of ‘indirect labour’ and maintaining
control over subcontracted tasks will also help, according to the Ministry.
It has been concluded that should there be
no improvement at the shipyards; a profitability crisis will result along with
a cash flow crisis that will lead to wages not being paid. Malta could
also be investigated by the European Union (EU) for breach of commitments.
