The government and its key people have pulled out all the stops, especially since the budget, to reinforce the perception that Malta is bucking the EU trend and that its economy is booming.

I will not be questioning the figures, such as they are, but calling instead for a sober appraisal of our national economy so as not to run away with the delusion that we have found the elixir of growth which has escaped all the others around us.

We now have a government that determinedly issues statements after every little piece of economic news, even when they are less than completely positive, and turning them into paeans of exultation. The most notorious case was when a Competitiveness Index revealed that Malta had slipped some places on this index and we had a minister announcing that we were still in the top 50 around the world.

On Friday, at The Economist gala dinner, Prime Minister Muscat was visibly glowing with self-congratulations, thumbing his nose at the (unpopular) EU, criticising the austere policies of Angela Merkel, boasting Malta had found a way to generate inward investment from non-EU countries such as China.

A statement like this bears examination. The investment from China is government-to-government, not private sector. And it is in only one sector, so far, even though it is a crucial sector - energy.

It is true that states everywhere act in purely nationalistic manner and seek what is good for them with a determination we seldom have, or used to have. Germany sends many delegations to China to seek markets, for example. It is not as if we have discovered the secrets of growth which elude the others.

The figure that time and again comes to the fore when speaking about growth is the very low unemployment figure. The Opposition tried, unsuccessfully, to water this down by claiming that unemployment is being kept down by government employing more and more people, but Minister Edward Scicluna, at the Business Breakfast organised by The Malta Business Weekly, argued that the figures in hand were not true.

However, full employment does not, in itself, guarantee growth. Otherwise, the China of Mao Tse Tung would have attained stratospheric growth. On the contrary, as has been pointed out, unless care is taken to ensure that additional workers have the proper tools, and unless there is constant pressure to avoid waste, having more people on the books can actually stunt growth, rather than foster it.

Government spin is one thing, but what I hear at street level is another. And at street level (I may be wrong, of course) I hear that growth struggles to take off even though electricity rates for families have been reduced, even though there is almost full employment, and so on.

For proof, ask the people in the retail sector, the shop owners, the importers and the like.

What is surely booming is the property market, especially the rental market, I'm told.

Looking around me, I think I know what is causing this. I doubt if the government has any certain idea of the amount of people relocating to Malta. A section of the population expresses concern about the coloured immigrants or boat people, but all around me I see, day after day, foreign number plates (some do not seem to pay their national licences, I hear). Sicilian and Italian restaurants are blossoming everywhere (even though many then close because they did not find the sales they thought there would be).

(I am also told they are aghast at the prices asked by those who have been here longest - far beyond the actual cost of products, but that's another issue).

Around me, on buses, people engaged in all sorts of jobs, I see more and more foreigners trickling in. That, I believe, is what is fuelling the rental market, as well, of course, as the online gaming and betting companies etc and services in general.

So people with property for rent (and then not all) are booming, but that does not mean the country is booming along with them, although the multiplier effect is certainly there.

Even so, the wages they are being paid are so meagre we now may say we have a new underclass, a new proletariat. I do not know about the South, but I do know that Bugibba and St Paul's Bay have become proletariat towns, people who may pay rent at almost impossible rates but what they make is way better than what they have left behind them in Spain, Romania or Bulgaria.

Of course, these people are not considered as citizens. They are not Maltese, they rarely register and social services seem to be there mainly for the boat people. They do not vote, and the parties themselves seem to have little inclination to get them registered as voters. In a way, it is the same situation as that (of course on a grander scale) that Barack Obama has declared he wants to tackle - to get millions of illegal immigrants out of the black economy.

With the proper legislative tools, such people can become very useful assets to this country as it pursues elusive growth.

The Prime Minister and other ministers continue to boast that the electricity rate cuts have contributed to more people having more money at their disposal to kick-start a consumer boom. I have yet to find someone who can explain how his present ARMS bill is lower than it used to be, although I have no doubt this is what will happen in the long term.

Complementary to the budget expansionary measures, the government has announced a clampdown on social assistance fraud. Again, I would like to see beyond the spin. So far, as many others undoubtedly see as well, despite all the good intentions and declarations from the government, it seems that nothing much is being done at street level. For instance, the measure targeting single mothers. I am on record as being against this draconian measure, but did anyone hear cries of anguish or despair? Or people on the streets?

That is probably what the Commission means when it says the government's predictions regarding revenue and expenditure are on the optimistic side.

In short, and to wrap up, the economy is ticking but not at any great rate. Some figures make it seem even better than it is, but the vast great majority still have a relatively hard time making ends meet, although this is incomparably better than what people like the Spanish, or the Bulgarians etc experience in their own countries, which is why they continue to flock here.

We, or rather I, am not seeing any new money flowing in. None of these migrants are bringing in any new money. The only exceptions to this seem to be the well-heeled Libyans who have found refuge from their war here, with their Armani suits and superior lifestyle and maybe any, if any, who have bought Maltese passports and residency permits, the number of which we still do not know.

This is my understanding. My perception of things. It does not give the government any right to boast and act as if we have trumped the EU. Certainly, it does not give the Prime Minister any right to speak like he did on Tuesday in Parliament. He has not made the grade from party leader, and one in Opposition, to a Prime Minister. He was alternately patronising, populist and at the end even threatened to name some misdeeds committed by some members of the Opposition. In fact, he kept dangling that threat over their heads and enjoying their discomfiture. I have never been so ashamed of the head of my government.

In contrast, the sober macroeconomic explanation by Minister Edward Scicluna at the Business Breakfast was just what the Prime Minister's speech should have been all about.

At least, on Friday, Dr Muscat did not fall into the trap laid for him by Ken Livingstone who called for all sorts of government big projects as a way out of recession. Dr Muscat said growth must come from the private sector, not from the government. Maybe there's still hope.

 

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