Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/487054
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 29 MARCH 2015 8 JAMES DEBONO PORT Cottonera Limited has ap- plied to develop a two-storey hotel in the Macina, which formerly served as the Labour Party's headquarters. The application represents a change from plans approved in 2013 by the same consortium, to re-use the his- torical building for a mixture of exhi- bition space, conference facilities and catering establishments. The works approved in 2013 includ- ed the demolition of the second floor of an existing building considered as an accretion to the original building. But this storey is being retained in the proposed hotel building. The shear bastion building derives its name from 'macchina', a mecha- nism which was used for ship-mast fitting. The mechanism was origi- nally made of strong hardwood, but in 1864 the British changed it to a modernised steel structure. In 1927, the machine was dismantled by the Admiralty in favour of a floating lift crane. Il-Macina has subsequently been used for a variety of purposes, in- cluding the Admiralty's Head Office, a Trade School and the Headquarters of the Malta Labour Party. Port Cottonera, which represents a variety of entrepreneurs and estab- lished business groups, is the devel- oper of the Cottonera Waterfront, which hosted the Casino de Venezia and a host of restaurants and corpo- rate offices. The concession included the 3,000 square metre vaults of the Gateway Building, used for marina related storage and chandlering, the Macina fort and the promenade. News Labour's former Macina HQ earmarked for hotel Small farmers exempted from cesspit obligation Competition authority unknown to most Maltese SMALL crop growers and small animal husbandry farmers will be exempted from some obligations related to the implementation of the EU's nitrate directive which deals with the nitrate contamina- tion by fertilisers and animal re- mains that are negatively affecting Malta's ground water bodies. A new legal notice makes sure that they will no longer be required to build manure clamps or cesspits, to cover passageways, to keep records and to have a fertilizer plan. Exempted animal husbandry farms include farms with fewer than 100 layer or broiler hens, farms with fewer than 25 rabbits and those having up to two pigs, five sheep or three bovines. All farmers owning less than half a tumolo of land (600 square metres) are exempted from preparing a fer- tilizer plan and from keeping updat- ed management records on matters like "the quantity and type of ferti- lizer moved on or off the holding". Farmers who spoke to this news- paper described these requirements as quite demanding on small farm- ers. The new rules may actually en- courage smallholdings instead of encouraging the consolidation of the multitude of small farms and pieces of cultivated land into a number of larger farms, to increase both com- petitiveness and strengthen envi- ronmental controls. THE Maltese are the least likely to have ever heard of a decision taken in their country against a company by a competition authority. Only 18% of the Maltese have ever heard of such a case. This emerges in a recently pub- lished Eurobarometer survey con- ducted in all 28 EU members. Moreover only 12% of Maltese, compared to 40% of Europeans, would take their case to the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority. Respondents in the Czech Repub- lic (64%), Germany (63%) and Fin- land (62%) are most likely to say that they have heard of a competition- related decision, having been taken by a competition authority against a company, and in the Czech Repub- lic and Germany, a high proportion say that they have heard of this hap- pening more than once (49% and 47% respectively). Apart from Malta those least like- ly to have heard of any such cases were respondents in Bulgaria (24%) and Cyprus (26%). Yet the Maltese are firmer believ- ers in the benefits of competition than other EU citizens. 64% of Maltese compared to 44% of Europeans believe that competi- tion brings a decrease in prices. But the percentage of Maltese who be- lieve that competition brings about lower prices has declined from 73% in 2009. In the EU as a whole, respond- ents in this survey are more likely to disagree that competition allows for better prices than they were in 2009. The largest rises in disagreement are seen in the Czech Republic (+13 pp), Lithuania (+9 pp), Malta (+9 pp), Greece (+9 pp), Slovakia (+8 pp), Austria (+8 pp), the Nether- lands (+8 pp) and Germany (+8 pp). Respondents in Croatia (29%), Belgium (28%), Spain (28%) and Malta (25%) are most likely to say that they have experienced a lack of competition that resulted in a prob- lem in the telecommunications and Internet sector. The lowest figures can be found in Estonia (10%) and the United Kingdom (11%).