Although the pre-budget document published by the government last Saturday is over 180 pages long, it is full of rhetoric with no substantial proposals that will alleviate the heavy financial burden on Maltese families, Labour deputy leader for parliamentary affairs Charles Mangion said yesterday.
Dr Mangion said the PN government had been in power for the past 18 years and people were fed up with empty promises and expected concrete results. “These are definitely not present in the pre-Budget Document,” he added.
Labour’s deputy leader said the document was simply a “cut and paste exercise” bringing together various proposals from other previous government initiatives. He said there are no incentives to boost tourism, a lack of specified targets and no proposals to attack the serious problems in the health sector.
“With tourism increasing by around five to six per cent in other Mediterranean countries, we experienced a loss of around 12,000 tourists already this year. Notwithstanding the various reforms and strategic plans published, nothing is being done to address this decline in an all-important sector to our economy.”
Dr Mangion asked if pensioners and those at the lower end of the income scale were living a better life after 18 years of a PN government. He said that the economic analysis in the document shows a rosy situation but this was very far from the truth and the reality being experienced by workers and their families.
He said that Eurostat figures showed that economic growth between the years 2000-2004 was a negative figure of 0.5 per cent. In 2004 alone, salaries went up by just one per cent while the tax burden increased from 28 per cent of GDP to 37 per cent while the employment rate went down and unemployment crept up.
“When one analyses the document, economic growth was mostly due to the large stockpiling of inventories that were not sold. Correspondingly, our inflation rate has now reached three per cent while salary increases have only moved upwards by one per cent this year. How can the government say people are enjoying a better standard of living?”
Dr Mangion said that government measures contributed to a decrease in reserves of around Lm90 million. He said the over-use of buzzwords like venture capital funds, business energies and strategic plans showed that the government was dry on initiatives.
With regard to the proposed tax reforms, Dr Mangion said the government had collected around Lm300 million in extra taxes for six years and was now proposing a measly payout of Lm8 million over three years. He said that around 55,000 employees or 37 per cent of the workforce will not benefit from any tax cuts because they are below the tax threshold.
Dr Mangion said that according to the document, only 4,000 households would be affected by the proposed relief which was definitely not enough. He said the government had listened to Labour because it was not proposing the re-introduction of Children’s Allowance without means testing.
Concluding, Dr Mangion said the document was simply the recycling of past ideas and offered no new stimuli. He said that this contrasted sharply with Labour’s approach and new policy documents that showed that the party was ready to govern.