The Nationalist Party is insisting that the Labour Party does not actually know just how much its election programme costs, dismissing the economic model presented yesterday.
At a press conference at the PN headquarters, Finance Minister Tonio Fenech challenge the party to publish the manifesto’s actual costings, showing just how much its proposals would cost. He insisted that this exercise was not actually carried out.
Labour argues that its programme will cost a total of €732 million, compared to the PN’s €1.1 billion.
But Mr Fenech pointed out that the person tasked with coordinating the manifesto – MP Karmenu Vella – went on record as stating that it was not his role to know how much each proposal cost.
“What was he coordinating,” the minister asked rhetorically. “The typing?”
At Labour’s presentation, party leader Joseph Muscat and MEP Edward Scicluna explained that its projections were based on economic forecasts made by the European Commission and by the International Monetary Fund. But Mr Fenech pointed out that the IMF’s forecast only went up to 2015, and the Commission’s forecasts only covered this year and the next.
Dr Muscat and Prof. Scicluna had contradicted each other on economic forecasts in recent statements, Mr Fenech pointed out. The former predicted annual economic growth of 4% in an interview, while the latter said that it would be impossible to predict growth exceeding 2%.
The minister also castigated Labour for failing to explain how jobs would be created, what measures would help, how much would they cost, and ultimately, how many jobs would be created.
Mr Fenech dismissed Labour’s proposals on the economy, stating that these were either measures already carried out, copied from the PN’s programme or from the 2013 Budget, simple wishes without concrete proposals or plain wrong as he went through a number of them.
He also criticised it for not committing itself to a balanced budget: Labour projects a deficit amounting to 0.5% of GDP in 2017, while the PN projects a budget surplus in 2016. Labour insists that the PN’s projections are badly calculated, and that they would actually only bring the deficit down to 1.3% of GDP by 2017.