They’re really pressing home hard on this China thing

Published: February 6, 2014 at 11:02pm

The Agriculture Ministry has sent out this round-robin letter to drum up business for a Chinese fairs and exhibitions company. You’d think at first glance that what they’re doing here is trying to drum up business for Maltese companies by encouraging them to take part in a fair in China on the off-chance that they might get a few export orders.

They can’t even get the targeting right. This is about food products, but the letter I’ve uploaded here was sent to a trucking and container company. Maybe the Agriculture Minister’s people have bought the legend that the Chinese really do eat everything.

Chinese exhibition




32 Comments Comment

  1. La Redoute says:

    They can’t even get the dates right.

    What are products derived from Maltese origin?

    • ciccio says:

      “What are products derived from Maltese origin?”

      EU passports and citizenship.

      • H.P. Baxxter says:

        Yes. I remember my atlas back in the 1950s, listing the major produce of each country.

        Malaya – sisal and rubber
        Rhodesia – copper
        USSR – sunflowers, wheat
        Great Britain – coal, steel, wool

        The 2014 edition has:
        Malta: passports

      • Joe Fenech says:

        Up till a couple of years ago it used to be Kinnie and bloody industrial biscuits.

      • La Redoute says:

        Products derived from Maltese origin could be anything under the sun. They needn’t be OF Maltese origin, just derived from it.

  2. Banana Republic .... again says:

    What a date! It’s being organised between the 4th and …. July.

  3. Dissident says:

    To succeed in selling foodstuffs to the Chinese you need to have famous delicacies like foie gras, grano padano etc, Wealthy Chinese are very brand-cosncious and associate luxury goods with Italy or France, so the humble gbejna has a slim chance, and the rest of the Chinese can’t afford it anyway.

  4. Beingpressed says:

    Has anyone ever considered that maybe the Chinese and Russians are just a smoke screen. How about some of Libyan friends across the water or maybe some of our colonial cousins from South Africa. Walk around Sliema and have a look for yourselves .

    • Beingpressed says:

      Unless China is about to undergo a radical change and become a democratic society why else’s would the Chinese need to buy an E.U. passport? They stash all their money in the BVI. Which is guaranteed by the UK government as long as they get their £70 billion worth of trade.

      On the other hand if you was Libyan,have friends in high places, possessed a shit load of money why not come to Malta. We will clean it for you and give you a passport.

      • vanni says:

        ‘On the other hand if you was Libyan, have friends in high places, possessed a shit load of money why not come to Malta. We will clean it for you and give you a passport.’

        Speaking of which, whatever happened to Joe Sammut?

  5. Joe Fenech says:

    1) “Attached kindly find”

    What kind of syntax is that?

    2) “Should your company is interested”

    WTF?

    • Chris Ripard says:

      “at Beijing Exhibition Centre” – definite article missing

      “feels that the local industry” – definite article shouldn’t be there

      EFL classes needed . . .

    • Calculator says:

      That’s a literal translation from Maltese to English.

  6. Beingpressed says:

    How many billions of Gaddaffi’s money still have to be recovered. Who were his friends to the very end?

  7. Jozef says:

    The real food fair is next year’s Milan Expo.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8UZJQod4ko

  8. Mandy Mallia says:

    Only yesterday, somebody posted on Facebook that she noticed that the egg slices on her pizza where uniform, when, on slicing an egg, one ends up with slices varying in diameter.

    On approaching the kitcen with her suspicion, the pizzaiolo admitted that yes, they do use ‘egg sausage’ (processed egg, formed into a sausage shape) … which is, apparently, imported from China.

    https://www.google.com.mt/?gws_rd=cr&ei=S3z0UqGOOoq0yAOe1oD4Bw#q=egg+sausage+photo&biv=i%7C0%3Bd%7C2mCOfjWfUIEwAM%3A

    As if it is not enough that many catering outlets have resorted to using pre-cooked-in-China-and-imported-into-Malta frozen cubes/slices of chicken. I shudder to think what else we may be eating, which is passed off as ‘fresh’.

  9. jack says:

    So the real name is “Antonia Belfiore” (vide email address) yet, it is signed off as “Tania” – how cosy and casual can it get?

  10. Tabatha White says:

    The fact that it was sent to a trucking and container company IS worrying, and says more about intentions than the rest of the contents in the letter.

    • Tabatha White says:

      In actions like these one is able to trace the mentality of the barriers-to-trade Mintoffian dinosaurs still in action.

      Link and associate the words coming from other quarters.

      The most shocking words from Louis Grech, for example:
      “ensure that Malta is not held hostage by financial institutions and PREPARE FOR A TIME WHEN MALTA NO LONGER RECEIVES THE EU FUNDS IT IS PRESENTLY GETTING was in line with both Maltese and European values.””

      What is happening is that we are going to receive provocation upon provocation.

      All the progress we thought was made in the last 25 years under the Nationalist Party is being unravelled.

      Those who think that progress is set in stone and what follows is that one builds upon it, have not understood the mentality in play here:

      Usually what happens is that progress happens over time, with one detail and factor added on to what is already there. One piece fitting behind the other. When a new piece comes in over time, one tends to add it to what was there. One does not rationally think that the progress itself and the suite should be unravelled. Rearranged maybe. And therefore satisfied with the accumulative effects of progress, complacency sets in and each piece added is taken for granted.

      A full provocation taken to term will seek to redesign. Redesign in this case does not mean “add on.” The time factor which is gradual and evolving has now thrown up the Labour Party into the mix. The Labour Party is both unable and unwilling to function with the “pieces in place.”

      It is going to deconstruct every process we now take for granted and only retain the pieces that are convenient to its design.

      What was important to the Mintoffian spirit was full control of who traded and how. What cuts went where and to whom.

      Ministers now in position have been involved in arranging higher trade purchase prices direct with the suppliers and siphoning these off into accounts, to the detriment of company owners, who were forced into silence because without what they were earning, albeit reduced, there would have been no liquidity. Banks supported the application of pressure into a forced silent-passive position.

      People all along the supply chain were involved in the racket, down to the GWU that would act as chorus.

      It appears we are now in the process of updating that horrid, destructive mentality.

      – Bulk buying;
      – Kasco’s securing of staples and financing of outlets undergoing rapid expansion: inexplicable in terms of the most generously applied business-standard profit margins;
      – Taghna lkoll;
      – Changed relationship with the EU;
      – Alfred Sant contesting the EP elections specifically at this time;
      – Rumours newly being stirred in timely fashion by the Taghna Lkoll crowd that effect this whole set up from start to finish;
      – The centrally important new development fund for which there is no mandate as created:

      these are all the pieces coming into the new mix.

      The jigsaw puzzle taken apart and the pieces given new pictures and forms.

      The “wonder and awe” of inexistent clean Labour vision.

      The misleading media releases.

      The fools who adhere to it.

      The complacency that supports it.

      The business community should be getting shivers down its collective spine, if they thought that the stability that was ours within the EU was going to last forever.

      With Labour, if an evil manipulative thought exists, there is no way – short of uprooting the root and all of its veins and cementing the surface a kilometre under – that the evil will cease to exist.

      The flame has long been kept burning.
      MLP is back with a vengeance.

      Louis Grech accuses the Opposition of scaremongering.
      What Labour are deceptively putting into place has been and is far worse than the whole of the world could have ever imagined.

      Bil-Provi.

      Yes. The Labour Government should self-flagellate itself into extinction.

      The economy will be “kept going” until the next elections, because:

      i) a voter figure difference will still not be within their full control.

      ii) It takes time for an economy to slow down. A non taghna lkoll business will first tighten up further, then attempt to diversify and slowly but surely then find itself in the desired Mintoffian cycle: dependent on Government.

      iii) putting all the structural elements of this intended dependency into position.

      But the strike would be intended to follow the next elections

  11. gigi says:

    Dom Mintoff’s products of Maltese origin were capers and goats. But in the Muscat era, it would be passports.

  12. zz says:

    What is most offensive is the spelling mistake in the date. Can’t they reread the thing?

  13. The Mole says:

    Is she Tania or Antonia? Her signature and email address differ.

  14. beingpressed says:

    Who leaked info regarding prospectus passport-buyers? Chinese business private jets, Formula 1 drivers – what a bluff. Muscat was right, exciting times are ahead. There always seemed to have been such a rush to get this scheme pushed through. There’s no revolution in China.

  15. Foggy says:

    The errors in this letter suggest it has been written by another political appointee selected not on merit but for services to the PL.

  16. Tony says:

    What about food safety?

  17. Catsrbest says:

    I have no trust at all in the products that country manufacture – not even when choosing, say a simple handbag, let alone food.

Leave a Comment