The Nationalist government should carry out a thorough analysis over the social and economic decline of Malta as more and more organisations are beginning to adopt the Malta Labour Party’s stance, said MP Marie Louise Coleiro yesterday.

In a statement, Ms Coleiro said that even government statistics were confirming the decline. “Statistics have shown that the cost of living, with particular reference to staples such as food, healthcare and medicines, has risen while the government’s expenditure on social benefits has also climbed,” she said.

She said that statistics for the period between January and May 2006 showed that expenditure on old age pensions, social assistance and ill health assistance reflected that the number of people who were on the poverty threshold was increasing. This, she said, was so because the statistics were compiled according to the 2000 household budgetary survey, which indicates that 84 per cent of those who get the abovementioned benefits were at risk of falling into poverty.

She said that the government needed to review its policy and draft fiscal incentives that would alleviate the burden on all, but particularly the lower strata of society. She said that the measures implemented by the government over the past few years has resulted in a widening of the poverty gap.