Development of water resources in Malta

Abstract

Economists agree that without sound urban conditions, no lasting economic development take place. In economic terms, development , inter alia, on the availability of resources and manpower. Water ranks high among the resources in particular, it is a basic resource for fundamental activities. The provision of piped water is important as a result of this, there will be a diseases. It is estimated that each year about 500 million people suffer from disabling diseases that can be related to unsafe water supplies.

Economic development that measures capable of exercising favourable effects on the flow of income should be taken in a wide variety of fields - public administration, education, health, urban development - and it is recognized that in any economy a substantial proportion of funds must be devoted to projects of this nature whose output is not readily assignable as fully recoverable market value. Funds invested in such basic services, without which primary, secondary and tertiary productive activities cannot function - that is all public services such as the maintenance of law and order, education, transport, communications, , public health, and water supply - called social overhead capital. From this point of view of development, the provision of social overhead capital - and with it public health and water facilities - is not an end in itself but rather a basic investment to provide the premises needed to support directly productive activities such as, for example, mining and manufacturing. These necessary services, according to general economic concepts, are facilities which, in some sense, can be basic to a wide variety of economic activities and are generally run by public agencies or by private agencies subject to control, free of charge or at rates regulated by public agencies. As summarized by Hirschimann, there is no doubt that neglect of public utilities can become a more serious on economic progress. There is a minimum ratio of social overhead capital to directly productive services activity - a point at which output can only be increased if services are expanded. Unfortunately, it is easy to recognize the point at which development runs so far ahead of services that it becomes self-defeating [...]