As published on the Times of Malta: 12/11/2013.
I can think of few childhood memories more boring than the annual budget speech. Huddled in front of an ancient TV set listening to an old man drone on and on about the price of canned beef and my parents hushing us up as they try to listen. It was only until much later that I grasped the significance of it all. I learned that my parents, like most other families in Malta at the time, would have to listen as so much was uncertain and so much was dependent on the government of the time. I can still feel the apprehension. Nothing was taken for granted.
Thankfully, things changed, over the past years we allowed ourselves to relax. We began to take a lot of things for granted and the budget speech became a run-of-the-mill affair. We knew that the country’s finances were the top priority of a serious government determined to create the right conditions for wealth and for jobs. We knew that our hard-earned taxes were in the hands of those who were ready to even lose an election as long as they could leave the country was on safe financial ground. People who planned for a generation rather than for the next election. Statesmen.
This year once again the population gathered round to hear the finance minister deliver his two-hour mantra. Again there were signs of apprehension. What could we expect from the first budget delivered by a Labour Government this millennium? The last time round the country was lumped with the whole VAT/CET debacle so people were naturally concerned and they listened.
This time it was certainly slicker than 1997. A public relations exercise more than a budget. People’s instant reaction was not bad. Until they looked between the lines, read the small print and analysed some of the statements made. Then the stark reality became clearer.
Take the cash-for-passports scandal as a topical example. The Labour Government bulldozed ahead and is now ready to sell the chance to become a citizen of Malta and the EU, without any mention in its electoral manifesto, to whoever wants it. We’ve heard the Prime Minister justify this attempt at fund-raising time and again, claiming that this would apparently raise some 30 million Euros. It is now clear that this is only budgeted to raise 15 million Euros towards our national coffers, the rest is apparently meant to go into some sort of yet-to-be established ‘national development fund’. It’s almost an afterthought. So now we have the Prime Minister and his Ministers of our proud Nation running around the world almost pleading people to buy up to our passport scheme and get European citizenship. Salesmen.
Take stipends. We have all seen the billboard claiming that stipends have been raised. And indeed they have – by 4 cents per day. Not enough to buy you anything. I wonder how much more stipends could have been raised if we saved the money on those billboards.
Water and electricity rates should be cut some time next year with the cost now being raised in increases in licences and other indirect taxes. Robbing Peter to pay Paul was how someone aptly put it.
But this time really it is what people didn’t hear that concerned them.
This budget did nothing to incentivise job creation or address rising unemployment in Malta. We deserved more than a gimmicky election budget.
People also forget that soon after Labour was elected and started appointing everyone to everything the European Commission placed Malta under the excessive deficit procedure. Its calculations for where Malta’s economy is going are wildly different to those of the Labour Government. The European Commission is projecting a wider deficit and has publically pointed this out. It was a very public warning. Predictably the Labour Government responded by saying that this was because the European Commission did not trust the previous administration. A declaration that was met with disbelief in the Brussels corridors. People simply could not fathom that a Government would have no idea about how these things worked. It worried them and it should worry us.
Equally worrying is that apart from the excessive deficit procedure, Malta also has to address a number of what are known as Country Specific Recommendations designed by the European Commission. We had been expected to implement a multi-annual financial framework. To look beyond our noses. But again nothing was even alluded to in this direction in the budget.
We had to improve the efficiency and reduce the length of public procurement procedures. Again nothing.
Malta’s 2020 target for tertiary education attainment is that at least 33% of people aged between 30 and 34 should complete third level education. Malta is still lagging behind in this respect as only 22.4% of the age group concerned have successfully completed tertiary education. Some tablets will not hide the fact that yet again, today’s budget did not cater for the necessary measures to reach this target.
Look at Gozo. Not nearly enough attention has been paid to Malta’s sister island.
In just a few months months we’ve moved from being one of the most respected nations around the European Union table to being put in the same basket as micro Caribbean States. We have yet to realise how hard this could hit us.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131112/opinion/Statesmen-to-salesmen.494363
