When Maltese governments come to announce the budget for a given year in Malta it sometimes evokes harrowing images of housewives in the 1980s scribbling down prices frantically as they were being read out.

In the times (not so long ago) when the Maltese used to have to scrimp and save just to feed the family, many people on an average wage used to wait for the budget with a sense of dread. “How much will corned beef go up, or toilet paper, or tuna?” These were all the questions which housewives used to ask in little crowded groups on the shop street corner in the weeks and days building up to the much dreaded speech.

This would follow with hours and hours of drivel being read out in parliament with a few mils increase here and there. Thank God, those days are long over.

Gone are the days when the general public hung onto every word of the budget speech with the sole aim of seeing how many cans of tuna they would be able to afford under the price regime.

You had to live through it to know what is being written here. Due to the amount of anxiety that the build up to the budget used to cause, successive governments put the shutters up and the budget literally became a state secret.

Let us fast forward a few years. The budget is not the same in this day and age. Yes of course, pennies will be taken from people’s wallets – but it does not have the same paralysing effect of just 15 to 20 years ago.

People now look at the budget more holistically and look for measures to stimulate job creation, investment, new opportunities and a good picture of how Malta’s economy is functioning and how we are to make it grow.

Up to last year, members of the press were ‘forced’ to sit in, what we call the ‘dungeon’ below the Finance Ministry. Once there, journalists had to surrender their phones before being given a presentation of the budget. Once this was delivered, all would have to sit there incommunicado until the speech began in parliament. Now, one does not want to be taken the wrong way, we speak of the ‘dungeon’ affectionately, and the sandwiches on offer were always really very good.

In short, we had moved into the modern era with a flat screen television presentation, wi-fi, budget speech on CD and the full works. Yet the practice of keeping people ‘locked up’ persisted.

This year, after lobbying and negotiation by members of the press, the ministry decided to do away with the whole thing. Journalists were called to the briefing, given a copy of the speech and were allowed to keep their phones. The only thing we were asked to do (and this was of course mostly directed to new media) was to respect the 6pm embargo.

Guess what? Everyone did. Years and years of ‘mistrust’ were finally laid to rest as a new practical way of doing things began.

It is especially pertinent to note that on this occasion, the government truly practised what it preached. This budget was all about increased productivity and the actions of the ministry allowed one sector of the economy – the media – to do their job properly and efficiently. It might seem of minor importance, but Monday’s budget was the first time that the press were ‘trusted’ by the government on the sensitive budget issue for a great many years.