The National Statistics Office has issued a clarification following a report published yesterday in The Malta Independent, quoting PN Leader Adrian Delia’s speech on Sunday.

The article incorrectly quoted part of the PN’s pre-budget report. The sentence should have read: “NSO created an additional unit within the EXTRA Budgetary Units, titled National Development and Social Fund, to account for 70% of the flow of incomes from the IIP scheme. This flow of funds was accumulated over the past three years and should have therefore been included in government’s income over the three year period and not accumulated and recorded in 2016.”

The National Statistics Office clarified that was not the entity that created the National Development and Social Fund.

“The Fund was created by the Government by means of Legal Notice 47 of 2014.   

Up until September 2016, when the Fund was not yet set up, the seventy percent of the contributions from the IIP were temporarily held in the Treasury Clearance Fund (TCF) and were recorded as revenue according to the respective time of receipt, in 2014, 2015 and 2016.  Then, once the NDSF was created, this was reported within the Extra Budgetary Units list where the transfer between the TCF and the NDSF was reflected.  This transfer resulted in an equal expenditure and revenue transaction, which did not impact the fiscal balance for 2016.”