15 - 21 June 2000

'Take your business e-shore' workshop a success

by David Kelleher

Mauro Meazza, one of the leading financial journalists of Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy's top financial newspaper, has described Malta's e-shore offering "as one of the most promising emerging initiatives in cross border e-commerce solutions". Mr Meazza was chairing a well-attended workshop held at the Diana Sheraton in Milan organised jointly by Bank of Valletta, e-shore (run by Terranet Ltd) and KPMG Malta.

The workshop was held earlier on this month and was part of a concerted marketing drive targeting Italy and aiming to develop e-shore as the model for bringing e-commerce to Malta.

"With our state-of-the-art e-commerce technology, which we have set up in partnership with the leading international players in this field, we are able to provide world class quality services to international customers. Our marketing activities in Milan are attracting a lot of attention and we have some very interesting prospects including an interest to use Malta as a base for e-commerce," noted Kevin J. Vella, international business executive for e-shore and responsible for organising the Milan activities.

The solution being offered to international e-commerce companies builds on Malta's various strengths. "Malta offers a number of advantages for e-commerce set-ups. Low operating costs, a strong service industry, high skill level of human resources, good telecommunications and e-commerce infrastructure and an attractive fiscal regime.

"We do business in a European culture, have a language advantage and are two to three hours away from major European cities. KPMG is taking a very proactive approach in this area as we believe that there is a lot of potential," Pierre Portelli from KPMG, who was in Milan for the workshop, said.

Peter Perotti, the Bank of Valletta's representative in Milan, highlighted during the workshop the services being offered by the Bank as part of the e-shore solution and mentioned multi-currency transaction processing and a well developed banking and regulatory system as major advantages for coming to Malta.

"I have been in Milan for more than four years now and the opportunities here in the 'new economy' are very interesting. We shall continue to monitor the market closely and assist both from Malta and Milan those companies which intend to operate their e-commerce activities locally," he said.

"Our objective is to put e-shore on the world scene as a new way of doing e-business, with Malta as the ideal node for doing so. We know that this is an ambitious target but we have a good team of people, are situated in an ideal location, and truly believe in what we are doing.

"We have started our marketing activities recently and the feedback we are getting is very encouraging.We believe that by joining our strengths with those of partners like the Bank of Valletta, and KPMG our proposal on a global level is much stronger. The Milan workshop is just one of a series of marketing efforts which will continue over the coming months," Keith Fearne, CEO of Terranet Ltd, operators of e-shore, said.