In Monday’s budget for 2011, the government announced a scheme which hopes to rid our roads of heaps of junk that pass as cars.

The measure will involve a trade in, of sorts. Scrap your old banger and buy a small, economic and greener car and you will get €2,000 to go towards it. It is positive by all accounts. First of all, we will get all the old rust buckets off the road which not only pollute, but pose a danger on the roads. This will result in better air quality, and hopefully, more safety.

A similar scheme had been launched in the UK and was looked at as one of the few success stories of the Gordon Brown led Labour administration. Motorists flocked to the scrap yards to take advantage of the offer to scrap cars in return for a hefty rebate on a new one – provided it was economical.

This, as mentioned already, served to improve air quality, but it also resulted in a good cash injection into the economy. Whether by means of loans or savings, the British public rushed to snap up the offer and millions and millions of pounds were pumped back into the economy at a time when the recession was biting.

Of course, with new vehicles, one must factor in registration tax, road tax and insurance, so the scheme could potentially offer a huge boost to the economy. One notes with pleasure that the offer is not a token one – say €500 for your old car to be scrapped. The €2,000 figure allows for people to really think about the offer – one might well be very tempted to opt in if one considers that an old car can only be sold for a few hundred euros in today’s market.

The scheme also ties in with the vision for a new, modern and greener public transport fleet. Malta’s roads are choked. Whether you are commuting in the morning, the afternoon or at night, the traffic is beyond a joke.

Something has to be done, and getting huge petrol (or LRP) guzzlers off the road is a priority. Before the budget, the government had already announced that Lead Replacement Petrol was to be phased out. There are still a good number of vehicles which use this fuel and the budgetary measure will be an extra incentive to do away with them and trade them in for something smaller with less fuel consumption.

There are also incentives out there for hybrid and electric vehicles, and this was accompanied by schemes to install PV systems to charge those same cars. We are moving in the right direction slowly, but surely. Unfortunately, as a people, we are quite similar to the Americans, where one’s car is an extension of one’s castle, and (especially where men are concerned) the bigger it is, the better it is. That of course means more congestion on the roads, more emissions and more fuel being consumed. To quote an old saying, ‘out with the old and in with the new’. The motoring industry is set for a mini boom and should prepare for it.