The following is a summary of the government’s proposals for Budget 2008:
Strategy for social cohesion
• Implementing a labour market strategy to generate economic development and secure inclusion through employment
• Delivering education reforms to address the governance of the education system and the autonomy and decentralisation of State schools;
• Making housing more affordable and accessible by introducing new schemes and strengthening existing ones; and
• Implementing the enacted pension reform for more adequate and sustainable pensions.
In particular
Strengthening communities and families
• Revising the current system and thresholds of the children allowance to assist more families with children;
• Consider the possibility of granting the children allowance to families with an income over the threshold permissible for the grant of children allowances who would be servicing/repaying a house loan, provided they would not have other movable or immovable property;
• Incentivising and rewarding the introduction of innovative family-friendly and inclusive measures or initiatives in the workplace;
• Extending the maternity benefit to 14 weeks, from 13; and
• Tax credits for parents who send their children to private kindergartens
Incentivising work and ensuring employability
• Persons holding more than one part-time job be allowed to pay social security contributions according to their total earnings from all part-time work.
•Crediting the self-employed with their national insurance contribution during their first year of starting a business.
• Make ETC’s Traineeship programme mandatory for the very long-term unemployed or make them work 30 hours per week and their household benefits would be topped up to 75 per cent of the minimum wage.
• Introduce a part-time register for employees seeking a part-time job.
• Consider the feasibility of regulating the employment and working conditions of persons in temping positions.
• Introduce guidance services for adults.
• Consider assisting women who are not in the labour force to take up self-employment or work freelance.
• Either single parents retain their right to social benefits independently of their employment earnings or that the combined earnings ceiling be raised.
• Take action to rectify the situation whereby the law as is today actually penalises single parents who fall in the lower wage bracket.
• Sustained care for the vulnerable
• Strengthen the role of the children’s advocate to ensure better support and availability.
• Review foster care benefit to continue to support fostered children.
• Consider the revision of both the ceiling and/or the rate payable of the allowance for disabled children.
• Consider the revision of both the ceiling and/or the rate payable of the allowance for disabled children provided to those who have effective custody of a child who suffers from either cerebral palsy, severe mental sub-normality or is visually impaired and under 14 years old.
• Making the social assistance benefit recoverable from the other parent, usually the father, since they often do not carry financial responsibility for their children and thus the State would be subsidising irresponsible behaviour.
Sustainable pensions
• First area of concern relates to service pension issues.
• Second area of concern relates to anomalies that arise from the Social Security Act which create degrees of difficulties to different groups of existing pensioners.
Promoting active ageing
• Setting up of a scheme for persons aged 50+ that is based on the successful 4TEES project managed by ETC.
• Take measures for the increased participation of pensioners on the national boards, committees and councils.
• Build physical activity programmes at community and senior citizen centres.
• Provide incentives for fitness/wellness instructors taking geriatrics courses.
Institutional care of the elderly
• Consider a tax rebate on the amounts paid either by the elderly themselves and/or else by those financing the stay of their elderly parents in privately-run homes.
Persons with disability
• Explore the possibility of improving the access of persons with disability to post-secondary education.
• Finance the acquisition of more specialised IT equipment in support of disabled students.
• Ensure that all government summer schools are provided with the necessary support services to ensure full participation of disabled students.
• Waive the administrative fees to allow work permits to be given to live-in foreign personal assistants recruited by persons with disability and credit these workers with their obligatory NI contributions.
• Ensure increased accessibility of beaches to wheelchair users.
Housing
• Amalgamate the rent subsidy scheme administered by the Housing Authority and the rent benefit element granted according to the Social Security Act.
• Consider the introduction of interest subsidies on house loans for first-time buyers or those considered by the Housing Authority to be eligible for social purposes.
• Propose a private sector equity share scheme through which first-time house buyers are given the opportunity to purchase their residence from the private sector while the government taxes income derived from such interest earnings at the rate of five per cent only.
• Consider refunding to owners of privately-owned apartments the VAT paid by them for the installation of a lift.
• Consider extending the HeadStart Project for more young people.
Quality education for all
• Consider the development of a Trust Fund to encourage private or corporate bodies to donate funds to the university by making such donations tax-deductible.
• Develop joint degree programmes in partnership with leading world-class institutions, offered in Malta on a full-time basis.
• Develop a regulatory framework to assess and licence institutions operating in and from Malta, leading to a periodic accreditation of such institutions and their programmes.
For a better environment
• Consider a better tariff to promote power factor correction equipment.
• Provide an additional incentive for the use of thermal insulation on factory or household roofs and consider making it a legal obligation in respect of new buildings. Consider also incentives for double-glazing.
• Consider a further incentive on photovoltaics and also spread them to other renewables such as microwind.
• Explore the possibility of adopting a medium-term plan for the gradual phasing-out of incandescent light bulbs.
• Consider a net metering for companies, extending it from domestic users.
• Consider an incentive for hybrid cars that can save up to 40 per cent on fuel.
• Consider motivating people to car-pool and make public transport more efficient.
• Provide an incentive for increased use of biodiesel in public transport.
• Provide incentives as well as training for energy efficient building designs.
• Look into the possibility of formulating a scheme to assist householders to replace or refurbish balconies that are inconsistent with the character of Urban Conservation Areas.
• Consider incentives for the re-use and recovery of construction and demolition waste.
• Explore means how tracts of land permitted for development may be quarried, as against excavated.
• Promote eco-innovation
Investing in health
• Develop structured post-graduate training programmes for doctors and other healthcare professionals.
• Set up a taskforce to oversee the strategic development of community service.
• Pay due attention to the further development of supportive services in the community.
Gozo
• Improve Gozo’s accessibility especially through ongoing connectivity with mainland Malta, improved internal mobility and develop important infrastructures. Construction of an alternative route to the lower junction of Mgarr. Study on the capacity and economic potential of the port of Mgarr. Draw up a Public Service Obligations Contract for air transport services between Gozo and Malta.
• Strengthen Gozo’s economic sectors: develop cruise liner facilities at Mgarr, Xlendi and Marsalforn and extend yachting facilities at Mgarr.
• Improve the quality of life in Gozo: introduction of pricing strategies on Gozo Channel fares; adopt video-conferencing in respect of educational courses; continued transfer of back-office operations from Malta to Gozo; introduction of tele-medicine between Malta and Gozo.
In support of our youth
• Introduce technology education at all levels in pre-16 education.
• Make young people aware of their rights and actively encourage them to participate in collective agreements.
• Promote entrepreneurship and reduce the administrative burdens of setting up a business.
• Reduce the difficulties faced by young mothers to return to work quickly.
Promoting sports
• In line with the recent introduction of the anti-obesity initiative, complementary programmes with the objective of motivating people to greater participation in physical activity shall be developed.
• Make sports-medicine services and facilities more accessible.
• Insurance industry to be encouraged to create affordable programmes of medical insurance to cover injuries sustained in training and competition.
• Consider a tax rebate on children’s participation in physical activity programmes to an amount not exceeding Lm100.
• Consider the possibility of developing a curriculum in Physical Education that will provide children, regardless of physical or mental ability, or skill level, with a planned programme of physical, intellectual, social and moral development.
• Incentivise more investment in sports through a tax refund scheme on sports-related capital projects and on the acquisition of certain sports equipment; and through the application of reasonable tax-credits to organisations sponsoring national and international events.
Investing in culture
• Launch an employment scheme to increase the accessibility to the labour market of people seeking professional employment within the cultural sector.
• Set up the Mediterranean Art Project incorporating the Malta Institute for the Visual Arts and the Garden City Project, which will also fill an existing gap in academic training in the practice of visual arts.
• Set up a Music Academy to improve standards, build an identity for Malta, reach out to the community and generate employment for music artists.
• Start planning from now for 2018 when Malta hosts the prestigious Capital of Culture event.
• Create a National Arts Fund funded through a yearly direct government grant and private donations, to support and enhance the cultural life of Malta.
• Offer tax deductions on grants, awards and scholarships.
• Offer unpaid leave for public sector employees to develop creative projects.
• Reduce VAT rate from 18 per cent to five per cent on objects of art, the rental of space for creativity and entrance fees for museums, exhibitions, concerts and theatres.
• Exempt all arts training and education programmes from VAT through an exemption exercise currently valid only for ballet schools.
• Introduce a system whereby a small percentage of the capital outlay on newly-constructed buildings would have to be spent on public art in the vicinity.
Sustainable localities
• Create and ensure high quality public spaces.
• Modernise infrastructure networks and improve energy efficiency.
• Implement proactive innovation and education policies.
• Pay special attention to the deprived neighbourhoods within the context of the town or city as a whole.
• Pursuing a policy of social integration that contributes to reducing inequalities and preventing social exclusion.
Science and Technology
• Promote a scientific culture.
• Increase the number of those opting for employment in this sector.
• Bring science policies closer to the people.
• Ensure a qualitative scientific education.
• Have a sufficient number of S&T professionals.
Vision 2015
• A regional centre for ICT
• Support long-term sustainable growth in financial services
• Achieve sustainable tourism
• Move up the value chain in industry
• Create an international educational centre
• Set in place an outward-looking and competitive quality health service