The parliamentary debate on next year’s budget is mercifully over and, as the spin doctors take a rest, the enduring realities facing Maltese taxpayers re-emerge in their hard dimensions.

The bare bones of this year’s performance highlight the following facts.

The government has, once again, spent far more (Lml,023 million) than its revenue intake (Lm965 million) and the accounts for this year are expected to close with a Lm57 million deficit.

The proceeds from the sale of assets, totalling Lm74 million, have been considered as revenue finance. If this were to be taken out of the equation, the deficit would have run up to Lm 131 million

Although the government plans to provide limited tax relief, it nevertheless intends to extract even more revenue next year

Meanwhile, total government debt kept peaking up, to reach a crushing level of Lml,349 million at the end of this year. This burden involves an outlay of Lm77 million in servicing costs per annum.

This scenario is by no means pretty to behold. Yet Malta’s leading political parties continue to be engaged in close combat all along the line. Most of the time, they are arguing about issues calculated to alienate public opinion.

Plethora of indictments

Very often, government and opposition have blamed each other and explaining away their respective responsibility by shifting the onus on the other side.

The plethora of indictments will not help matters. When rhetoric meets reality, the hot air evaporates and the hard facts endure.

The situation calls for solutions not recriminations.

The hard facts revolve round the historical reality that a Nationalist government has been in office since l987, save for two short years between l996 and l998. During this long span of time, Malta edged its way towards the European Community, overspending on the way. Eventual EU membership “necessitated’ restructuring in the interests of convergence.

The exercise implied measures to make good for the harm caused by long years of deficit spending. Rather than concentrating on reducing the national debt, the government opted for a stiff taxation regime.

Point of exhaustion

The result is that taxpayers, on the one hand, and most of the business sector, have been squeezed to the point of exhaustion.

As if this were not enough, public sector utilities, namely the Water Services Corporation, Enemalta and such like, are gobbling up substantial funds for their operations and government-induced costs of old and recent vintage, continue to hobble the productive sector.

It cannot be said by any stretch of the imagination that the market system has come home in these islands. At one end, powerful speculators lord it over the small fry. At the other, there is no sufficient enforcement to maintain discipline among small businessmen operating in the penumbra between the official and the black economies.

Perhaps the situation would not have come to such a pass if the social partners played their part and worked together.

Ultimate responsibility

All “if” statements about the past, as well as the future, are open to controversy. Today’s reality is not. It hovers, like an albatross, over all our heads.

Although we may all like to have a say about what is to be done, the ultimate responsibility falls on the people’s elected representatives and, finally, on the government of the day.

On its part, the government has to rely less on political expedience and more on expert advice.

We learn geology after the earthquake. Now that Malta’s financial plight is public knowledge, the least one would expect is for the government to determine how the patient is and why. It is suicidal to fly without instruments.

To change the phrase, the flowers must not be allowed to wilt in the garden. So many years of hedging, fudging and dodging, while we all waited for a purposeful plan of action, must seem to one and all as unacceptable. It would be fatal to mistake the smouldering silence in business circles, and among the general body of taxpayers, as acquiescence.

Can’t the university and the constituted bodies representing employers and trade unionists produce the right sort of team to diagnose Malta’s ailments and proscribe the least palatable medicine, proceeding, perhaps, from the recent findings of Professor Joe Falzon of the University of Malta?

Can the contemporary chronic conditions be brought under control avoiding major amputation?