Located in the Mediterranean Sea, just south of Sicily, the Maltese archipelago mainly consists of three islands: Malta, Gozo and Comino. Total population is around 400,000 people.
The largest island of the group is Malta, from which the archipelago takes its name. Valletta, the capital, is the cultural, administrative and commercial centre of the archipelago. Malta is well served with harbours, chief of which is the Valletta Grand Harbour. Malta's international airport is situated five kilometres from the capital.
The second largest island, Gozo is topographically quite different from Malta. Quaintly attractive for its less industrialised way of life, Gozo can be reached from Malta by ferry-boat from Cirkewwa and Pieta, near Valletta, and by helicopter from the airport.
The distance between Malta and the nearest point in Sicily is 93km. The distance from the nearest point on the North African mainland (Tunisia) is 288km. Gibraltar is 1,826km to the west and Alexandria is 1,510km to the east.
Malta has gone a long way from being a strategic landmark to a strategic location in today's globalised business community. When it obtained its independence from Britian in 1964 Malta had to wake up and transform its economy based on military spending by foreign powers in Malta to a peace-time economy. Manufacturing and tourism where the first industries to emerge, but today the Maltese Islands are levering more on their strategic presence in the centre of the Mediterranean with the concept of being a hub in such sectors are tourism, financial services, transport and telecommunications.
In the early 1990s, Malta has moved from being an offshore to an onshore jurisdiction. It has completed a programme of reforming all its finance sector legislation in line with international best practice and was one of the first six countries in the world to reach an advanced accord on fiscal matters with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). As a result of this agreement Malta is NOT considered as a tax haven. It is actively involved with the OECD, the EU and the Commonwealth in modelling global regulatory policy.
Malta’s finance industry has benefited significantly from the country’s national policy of moving to the mainstream. Financial services is the fastest growing sector of the Maltese economy and one of the most important employers of trained professional staff, who are multilingual, with English and Maltese being the primary languages but with German, Italian and Spanish also being widely spoken. Malta has been assessed and promoted as a quality financial centre based on a number of factors. These indicate the attractiveness, competitiveness, reliability and consistency when doing business in Malta. Malta has become a full EU member on 1 May 2004 and has adopted the Euro currency as from 1 January 2008.